The perpetual conflict between Israel and the Palestinians has taken on an almost medieval tinge. In the aftermath of the Hamas electoral victory and the Lebanese war of 2006, there are renewed accusations that Israel represents a latter-day crusading force – a violent foreign implantation in the Muslim world akin to the military campaigns waged by Christian Europe against the Levant in the Middle Ages. This is not a new rhetorical trope by any means, but it takes on a certain piquancy given the seemingly stalemated and embittered nature of the present confrontation.
The Crusader charge leveled at Israel is employed chiefly by Islamist groups like Hamas and Hezbollah, but has older antecedents in the Arab nationalist critique of Zionism as a form of Western colonialism. For these voices, the very establishment of a Jewish homeland in the Middle East represented an unacceptable intrusion, with the post-1967 occupation of the West Bank and Gaza only compounding this original sin. Israel, so this narrative goes, was from its inception alien and illegitimate – a European racial and religious collective foisted upon an unwilling region through military force. The self-conception of Labor Zionism – of recreating an indigenous Hebrew peasantry on lands purchased and worked – is dismissed as a flimsy cover for what was simply another expression of Western imperialism.
This Crusader framing warrants a degree of scrutiny, if only to ascertain whether it represents an accurate historical parallel or is simply a rhetorical bludgeon. A dispassionate contrast reveals some obvious similarities on the surface level – a clash between societies of differing creeds in which one side is regarded as an intrusive foreign element. The Crusaders were undoubtedly inspired by a militant, proselytizing faith and did employ terrible violence upon Muslim and Jewish civilians alike. Their war cries of “Deus vult!” were doubtless chilling to local inhabitants.
At the same time, these European soldiers and nobles were hardly colonists in any modern sense. They wished not to remake the Middle East as an extension of Christian Europe but rather to control key religious sites and trading hubs while leaving local governance largely undisturbed. Indeed, the relative religious tolerance of some Muslim regimes like Saladin’s helped doom the Crusader presence. In contrast, the Zionist project was an explicitly nationalist one of carving out a sovereign homeland, with all the attendant trappings of statehood. Religion was a component, but not the sole driver.
Additionally, while the charge of Zionism being a foreign “implant” has some intellectual pedigree in the works of thinkers like Albert Hourani, it occludes certain key contextual realities. The Jewish people have ancient ties to the lands in question that vastly predate the Muslim Arab conquest, with Hebrew civilization being interrupted but never extinguished. The very name “Palestine” stems from the Philistines, who were not Arabs. Jewish communities maintained a foothold in cities like Jerusalem, Hebron, and Safed right through the Ottoman period. So while European ideas and financing were catalytic for modern political Zionism, the movement also represented an atavistic return and renewal for an indigenous people with a credible ancestral claim.
That said, what undoubtedly strengthens the Crusader analogy in the contemporary context is Israel’s ongoing military occupation and the bitter inter-ethnic resentments it has created. The continued “facts on the ground” of Israeli settlement-building in the West Bank, military incursions into Palestinian cities, and episodic conflicts have made Israel appear more like a conquering foreign force than a long-awaited national repatriation. If the Gaza disengagement indicated a willingness by some to set aside the biblical cartography and seek a pragmatic repartition, the 2006 Lebanon war and the stalling of the diplomatic process underscore how easily such hopes can be subverted by chauvinist rejectionists on either side.
One could argue that the very existence of a substantial Palestinian diaspora population – both those expelled in 1948 and those who fled thereafter – supplies perhaps the most damning parallel with the Crusaders. These European intruders too displaced and subjugated great swathes of the local populace, ruling an archipelago of fortresses situated amid a sullen, simmering majority. The rallying cries of modern Palestinian resistance organizations like the PLO and Hamas have clear echoes in the ultimate expulsion of the Crusaders by figures like Saladin and Baybars. The language of “usurpers,” “foreigners,” and “holy war” crops up with uncanny regularity.
In this light, critics of Israel have a point when noting that the country’s democratic credentials are vitiated by its negation of full rights to an oppressed ethnic minority under indefinite military rule. The lurid images of Israeli soldiers manhandling Palestinian civilians or pulverizing their homes from the air lend credence to the idea of a hostile occupying army of outsiders – however stable and prosperous Israel may appear within the Green Line. For all the country’s free press and elections, the continued expansion of settlements in the West Bank reveals a deliberate policy of incremental displacement at work.
Ultimately, however, the Crusader framing represents something of a double-edged sword for its proponents. Insofar as it highlights the lamentable dynamics of occupation, it has a degree of legitimacy and should serve as a goad to seeking a lasting resolution. But in positioning the conflict as a perennial civilizational clash between Islamic authenticity and alien, foreign intruders, it precludes the very possibility of compromise that could end the cyclical violence. The sad reality is that both Israelis and Palestinians have legitimate roots and grievances that demand mutual acknowledgment.
For a sobering case study, one need only revisit the ultimate fate of the Crusader kingdoms. Their bloodily-imposed realm may have reigned for centuries, but it rested on far too flimsy a foundation of ethnic and religious exclusivity to endure amidst a largely indifferent populace. They were gradually corrupted from within and drained of their zealous certainties, finally succumbing with pathetic ease to the more locally-rooted Mamluk sultanate. Let us hope that wiser heads in Israel and Palestine heed this medieval lesson before even more lives are squandered on perpetual war.
Indeed, the very fact that the metaphor persists should serve as something of a wake-up call. Just as the Crusaders fell prey to their own dogmatic delusions of religious and racial supremacy,the continued inability to reach a peaceable partition between two peoples threatens to condemn both societies to a similarly dismal trajectory. Israel’s very success as a nation may contain the seeds of its potential undoing if it cannot slough off the ideological cant ado militant irredentist claims. Its army appears utterly dominant, but to what end this dominance is leveraged remains unclear.
Meanwhile, the Palestinian people have every right to assert their national aspirations and human dignity, but must reckon with the reality that no amount of terrorist “resistance” can ever hope to militarily dislodge Israel. Hamas’ attempt to model itself after the emancipatory example of Hezbollah instead appears likely to mire Palestinians in yet more disillusioning violence if it does not moderate its absolutist ambitions. As with the Crusaders, the lure of religious revanchism may stir the blood and offer cathartic action in the short term. But it offers no long-term solution to the inexorable historic currents of modernity and nationalism gradually sweeping the region.
For if nothing else, history cautions us that seemingly implacable conflicts between worldviews – even ostensibly total ones like Muslim and Christian – can prove remarkably ephemeral in the annals of time. The Crusaders faded away and took their grand designs with them. Israel and Palestine would do well to learn that compromise is the wisest path, and that imagined ancient grievances are ever a fool’s errand if permitted to calcify into perpetual bloodletting. The Levant and its peoples have survived far worse conflagrations, and would be wise to let reason and humanity prevail at long last.
