The primary aim of this paper is to critically evaluate whether social, political and economic upheaval can precipitate genocide. Instead of considering well-known examples such as the Holocaust or the genocide in Rwanda, this author has decided to opt for a different, and at the same time profoundly original, framework. The United Nations defined genocide as any act committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group, and this is the exact reason why this author has decided to use the Israel-Palestine conflict as this paper’s examples of genocide. Such conflict has been going on for decades and this is probably the reason behind the scarce amount of interest paid to it by genocide researchers. This author believes that both examples represent some particular forms of genocide despite both greatly differing from the ‘normal’ definition of genocide. Palestinian and Israeli share common social, cultural and political factors, especially after thirty years of conflict, and the reasons behind the decision to refer to their actions in terms of genocide are diverse but at the same time interconnected if one considers that, in this atypical example, genocide appears to be the only available alternative for both perpetrators to fight for justice.
Palestine instituted legal proceedings against Israel before the International Court of Justice in the Hague for the violation of the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (Boyle, 2000). This was aimed at proving to the world at large that what the Nazis did to the Jews was legally similar to what Israel is currently doing to the Palestinian people. Boyle (2000) recognized that the only downside of the lawsuit was the claim that a Palestinian State did not legally exist. Nevertheless, he went on to argue that only Europe was reluctant to grant such recognition because of the pressure exercised by the US government. In such a scenario Boyle (2000) realized that the only way out was to sue the US before the International Court of Justice for abetting such genocide in violation of art. 3 of the aforementioned Convention. Years before, Egyptian foreign Minister M. Kamel (1978) had already defined the aggressive operations involving the mass killings of Palestinians as ‘Organised Genocide,’ but no actions were taken by the ICJ. As a consequence this author believes that the stark difference between Israelis and Palestinians and previous cases of genocide depends on the different factors that precipitated this ‘particular’ genocide in the first place. Genocide generally entails the use of the term evil to denote extreme human destructiveness and can be defined in terms of extreme harm, involving suffering and loss of life, generally resulting from instigation or provocation (Darley, 1992). In the Israeli-Palestinian case the instigating factor can be traced back to a search for basic needs. According to Staub (1999), when people are incapable of fulfilling basic needs they will engage in destructive psychological processes, although in this case, unlike other examples of genocide, the conflict was based on vital interests such as the need for living space. The primary factor that precipitated the mass killings between Israel and Palestine was a social and cultural factor such as the attachment to a territory that symbolizes the self-definition of a particular group and consequently the mistrust of the other. Access to resources and privileges is a social instigator of genocide. In the Israeli case ‘attachment’ represents a social factor directly related to ‘unhealed wounds’ that constitutes a characteristic predisposing toward violence. Jews have experienced enormous suffering, mainly due to the persecution of WWII and cruelty at the hands of others, which made them more likely to respond to a renewed threat with great violence (Staub, 1999). As a consequence, under extreme social conditions, political leaders, together with the economic elite of a nation, propagate destructive ideologies through the intensification of historical antagonism in order to assert their own status and power that has been denied in previous circumstances. According to Janoff-Bulman (1992), the behaviour of Israeli leaders can only be understood if one considers them as integral parts of their own group. Their own basic needs are frustrated and their families have suffered merciless pain. This resulting self-focus makes it impossible for them to consider other people’s rights and entitlements.
The work of Sumner (1906), who described the potential for genocide as endemic in every society’s foundation, is apposite in connection with this. Sumner (1906) focused on the importance o
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