Social Stratification and the Israeli Palestinian Conflict
In some ways, one could trace the development of the Israeli Palestinian conflict back to Biblical times, when the wandering Hebrew tribes fought their way into a place in what was then called Canaan. It was at that point that those tribes chose to make a covenant with their new God who was different from the Canaanite God, El. Not only were they of a different ethnicity than the original settlers of that valley, they chose to separate themselves from the religion and traditional practices of that people (Armstrong, 1993). Since that point, there has been increasing distinction between the two Semitic peoples who are now called Arabs and Jews, represented by the two distinct religions of Islam and Judaism. The intention in this paper is to explore the meaning of social stratification in this long term conflict.
This really is a story with its roots in the far distant past. According to Kunstel and Albright (1990), archaeology indicated that the Canaanites, descendants of many of the Palestinians, arrived in the Sorek Valley before 3300 B.C.E. There were villages and temples in the region long before the building of Egypt's great pyramids. The Canaanites had been established in the valley for centuries before the other nomadic people arrived in that region. The Hebrew people did not arrive until approximately 2000 B.C.E., along with other unsettled tribes. According to the Hebrew Bible, in the Genesis account, it as near the West Bank city of Nablus that Yahweh promised Abraham that Abraham's people would become a great tribe and that Yahweh would give all the land to his descendants. Through warfare, settlement, and intermarriage, the Hebrew did eventually displace the Canaanites, to large extent. The Canaanites further underwent modification with conquest by the Muslims, becoming converted to Islam. However, it is essentially on the promise of Yahweh to A...