ISRAEL-PALESTINE CONFLICT Middle East as their best hope for establishing it.

So in the 1880s, many

Jewish people started immigrating back to the promised land – an
Ottoman controlled Plaestine. By 1914, there were more than 75,000
One of the biggest myths about the Israel-Palestine conflict is that Jews in the area.
it's been going on for centuries, that this is all about ancient religious
After World War One, the Ottoman Empire collapsed, and the
hatreds. In fact, while religion is involved, the conflictis mostly about two
British and French Empires carved up the Middle East, with the British
groups of people having a violent dispute over land, political control, and
taking control of a region it called the British Mandate for Palestine. At
resources. However, this conflict really only goes back about a century, to
first, the British allowed Jewish immigration. But as more Jews arrived,
the early 1900s. But to fully understand, let’s go back to the very
settling into farming communes, tension between Jews and Arabs grew.
beginning, let’s go back to a few thousand years ago.
Both sides committed acts of violence.
Both Jews and Muslims have strong religious and cultural ties to
In 1922, the League of Nations approved a British Declaration
the region dating back around 4,000 years to Abraham – considered the
that promised a national home for the Jewish people on Palestine. But it
father of the two religions.
would be more than 2 decades before that promised would be fulfilled.
According to the old testament, God told his people to settle on a
By the 1930s, the British began limiting Jewish immigration. In
land called “Canaan”, which is in the approximate region of modern day
response, Jewish militias formed to fight both the local Arabs and to resist
Israel. In 1000 BCE, King Saul established the Israelite monarchy, which
British rule On 1939-45, the World War 2 broke out. More than 6 million
continued under King David and his son Solomon, who built the first
Jews murdered in the holocaust, with millions more displaced. In 1947,
Jewish temple in Jerusalem. This historical legacy became a part of the
after the war was over, and as sectarian violence between Arabs and
Jewish claim of the land of Israel. The land would continue to be
Jews there grew, the United Nations decided to partition the British
conquered and ruled by various groups, including Persians (538 BCE),
Palestine into 2 countries – the Jewish State of Israel, and the Arab State
Greeks (332 BCE), Romans (63 BCE), Arabs (636), Egyptians (878),
of Palestine. Israel agreed to the partition, and borders were drawn from
Fatimids (969), Seljuks (1073), Crusaders (1099), Mamluks (1250), and
two states. The city of Jerusalem, where Jews, Muslims, and Christians
the Ottomans (1516), who called the region “Palestine.” It would become
all have have holy sites, was to become a special international zone.
home to many sites considered sacred by Jews, Muslims, and Christians
However, many Arab residents thought the partition unfairly favored the
alike. During these transitions, Jews were forced to flee the area, creating
Jewish population. Violence soon broke out.
a diaspora – a dispersion of people from their homeland.
The plan was meant to give Jews a state, to establish Palestinian
FROM ‘PALESTINE’ TO ‘ISRAEL’. The region along the eastern
independence, and to end the sectarian violence that the British could no
Mediterranean we now call Israel-Palestine had been under Ottoman rule
longer control. The Jews accepted the plan, and on May 14, 1948, the
for centuries. It was religiously diverse, including mostly Muslims and
State of Israel was established, with David Ben-Gurion as its prime
Christians but also a small number of Jews, who lived generally in peace.
minister. Almost immediately, the Arab League, a group of surrounding
And it was changing in two important ways. First, more people in the
Arab countries (Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, Syria, Yemem, Saudi
region were developing a sense of being not just ethnic Arabs but
Arabia), rejected the partition and attacked. Israel fought back. And after
Palestinians, a distinct national identity.
more than 9 months of conflict, its armed forces occupied much of the
But in Europe, the Jewish diaspora also faces oppression and land designated to become the Arab State of Palestine. Egypt took
persecution. At the same time, not so far away in Europe more Jews control of the Gaza Strip. Jordan, then called Transjordan, took control of
were joining a movement called Zionism, which said that Judaism was the West Bank. The original plan for a Palestinian State was grapt(?).
not just a religion but a nationality, one that deserved a nation of its own.
This historic event became a victory for the Jewish people. But in
And after centuries of persecution, many believed a Jewish state was
the process, they pushed well past their borders under the UN plan,
their only way of safety. And they saw their historic homeland in the
taking the western half of Jerusalem and much of the land that was to
have been part of Palestine. And apparently 720,000 Arabs fled or were
expelled from their homes, many taking refuge in the Gaza Strip and the
West Bank.
This was would be remembered in Hebrew as the“War of
Independence”, and in Arabic as “The Catastrophe”. Tensions between
Jews and the Arab Muslims in the region would continue for decades.
THE CONFLICT CONTINUES. FIGHTTING BETWEEN Israel
and its Arab neighbors continued on and off for the next 60 years. In
1964, the “Palestine Liberation Organization” or “P.L.O.” formed to
consolidate the power of many small Palestinian groups. In the 1967,
there was a “Six Day War”, where Israel had won. When the war ended,
Israel had seized the Golan Heights from Syria, the West Bank from
Jordan, and both Gaza and the Sinai Peninsula from Egypt. Israel was
now occupying the Palestinian territories, including all of Jerusalem and
its holy sites. This left Israel responsible for governing the Palestinians –
a people it had fought for decades.
In 1978 Israel and Egypt signed the US-brokered Camp David
Accords and shortly after that, Israel gave Sanai back to Egypt as part of
a peace treaty. At the time this was hugely controversial in the Arab
world. Egypt President Anwar Sadat was assassinated in part because of
outrage against it. But it marked the beginning of the end of the wider
Arab-Israeli conflict. Over the next few decades, the other Arab states
gradually made peace with Israel, even if they never signed formal peace
treaties.
But Israel's military was still occupying the Palestinian territories
of the West Bank and Gaza, and this was when the conflict became an
Israeli-Palestinian struggle. The Palestinian Liberation Organization,
which had formed in the 1960s to seek a Palestinian state, fought against
Israel, including through acts of terrorism. Initially, the PLO claimed all of
what had been British Palestine, meaning it wanted to end the state of
Israel entirely.
Fighting between Israel and the PLO went on for years, even
including a 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon to kick the group out of
Beirut. The PLO later said it would accept dividing the land between
Israel and Palestine, but the conflict continued. As all of this was
happening, something dramatic was changing in the Israel-occupied
Palestinian territories: Israelis were moving in.
These people are called settlers, and they made their homes in
the West Bank and Gaza whether Palestinians wanted them or not.
Some moved for religious reasons, some because they want to claim the
land for Israel, and some just because housing is cheap — and often
subsidized by the Israeli government. Some settlements are cities with
thousands of people; others are small communities deep into the West
Bank The settlers are followed by soldiers to guard them, and the
growing settlements force Palestinians off of their land and divide
communities. Short-term, they make the occupation much more painful
for Palestinians.
Long-term, by dividing up Palestinian land, they make it much
more difficult for the Palestinians to ever have an independent state.
Today there are several hundred thousand settlers in occupied territory
even though the international community considers them illegal.
In 1987, following an incident with the Israeli defense forces that
left 4 Palestinian refugees dead. Palestinian militia led a violent uprising
known as the “First Intifada” (intifada is the Arabic word for uprising). It
began with mostly protests and boycotts but soon became violent, and
Israel responded with heavy force. A couple hundred Israelis and over a
thousand Palestinians died in the first Intifada. Around the same time, a
group of Palestinians in Gaza, who consider the PLO too secular and too
compromise-minded, created Hamas, a violent extremist group dedicated
to Israel's destruction.
After the First Intifada, around the early 1990s, it's clear that
Israelis and Palestinians have to make peace, so Israel and the P.L.O.
created a timetable for peace – the “OSLO ACCORDS.” This is meant to
be the big, first step toward Israel maybe someday withdrawing from the
Palestinian territories, and allowing an independent Palestine. The Oslo
Accords establish the Palestinian Authority, allowing Palestinians a little
bit of freedom to govern themselves in certain areas.
Hard-liners on both sides opposed the Oslo accords. Members of
Hamas launch suicide bombings to try to sabotage the process. The
Israeli right protests peace talks, with ralliers calling Prime Minister
Yitzhak Rabin a traitor and a Nazi. Not long after Rabin signs the second
round of Oslo Accords, a far-right Israeli shoots him to death in Tel Aviv.
This violence showed how the extremists on both sides can use
violence to derail peace, and keep a permanent conflict going as they
seek the other side's total destruction. That's a dynamic that's been
around ever since. Negotiations meant to hammer out the final details on
peace drag on for years, and a big Camp David Summit in 2000 comes of Palestine, upgrading the Palestinian Authority’s U.N. observer status
up empty. to non-member state - like the Vatican - from entity.
However, further peace talks in 2000 proved unsuccessful when The status upgrade has allowed them to participate in some
agreements could not be reached on the issues like the Status of General Assembly votes and join some international bodies. However, as
Jerusalem, the Rights of Refugees, and the Increased Jewish a non-member state the Palestinians cannot speak in meetings until after
Settlements in Palestinian Lands. Later that year, Ariel Sharon (Israeli member states, diplomats said. The Egyptian-drafted resolution allows
Opposition Leader) who would become Israel’s prime minister, visited the them to procedurally operate like a member state when acting on behalf
temple mount (?), home to the AL-AQSA MOSQUE in Jerusalem, an act of the G77 and China - making statements, submitting and co-sponsoring
many Palestinians found offensive. proposals and amendments, giving rights of reply and raising points of
order.
2000-05, SECOND INTIFADA. Violent protests, riots, attacks,
and suicide bombings broke out. This period of violence called the As of 31 July 2019, 138 (71.5%) of the 193 member states of the
“Second Intifada” lasted nearly 5 years, and marked the end of peace United Nations have recognised the State of Palestine. Many of the
that had come from the Oslo Accords. The violence ended in 2005, when countries that do not recognise the State of Palestine nevertheless
Israel withdrew from the Gaza. After that, Hamas gains power but splits recognise the PLO as the "representative of the Palestinian people".
from the Palestinian Authority in a short civil war, dividing Gaza from the
Two-state solution, proposed framework for resolving the Israeli-
West Bank. Israel puts Gaza under a suffocating blockade, and
Palestinian conflict by establishing two states for two peoples: Israel for
unemployment rises to 40%. This is the state of the conflict as we know it
the Jewish people and Palestine for the Palestinian people.
today.
The 1967 borders is basically a Palestinian State involving the
In 2006, a militant group, Hamas, won the Palestinian legislative
territories of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, with East Jerusalem as
election. Many countries considered Hamas a terrorist group because of
its capital. Israel does not want to agree to this because according to
their methods, such as carrying out suicide bombings and calling out for
Benjamin Netanyahu, the current Israeli prime minister, he claims that an
the destruction of Israel. Hamas and Israel continued to crash violently.
Israeli military withdrawal to pre-1967 borders would render Israel unable
ISRAEL AND PALESTINE TODAY. In 2017, Hamas called for the to defend itself. Netanyahu further said that between 1948 and 1967,
formation of a Palestinian State using the 1967 borders, but it did not Israel's borders were "boundaries of repeated wars," not "boundaries of
formally recognized Israel as a state, so Israel did not accept. Today, peace."
Palestine continues to fight for statehood in East Jerusalem, West Bank,
and the Gaza Strip. The conflict is further complicated by Israelis who
continue to settle in the West Bank. Several countries have pushed for
agreements in recent years, and many suggest the ‘two state solution’.
There were peaceful solutions that has yet to be achieved. The region
remains a place of significance for people of many ethnic and religious
backgrounds.
CLARIFICATIONS. Palestine, through PLO published ‘Palestinian
Declaration of Independence’ on Nov. 15, 1988. And on Dec. 15, 1988,
UN General Assembly Resolution 43/177 "acknowledged" the Palestinian
Declaration of Independence and replaced the designation "Palestine
Liberation Organization" by the designation "Palestine" in the United
Nations system. On Nov. 29, 2012, UN General Assembly resolution
67/19 was passed, approving the de facto recognition of sovereign state
 QUESTIONS
1. How did the Israel – Palestine conflict start in the first
place?
The conflict has been going on since the early 1900s, when the
mostly-Arab, mostly-Muslim region was part of the Ottoman
Empire and, starting in 1917, a "mandate" run by the British
Empire. Hundreds of thousands of Jews were moving into the area,
as part of a movement called Zionism among mostly European
Jews to escape persecution and establish their own state in their
ancestral homeland. (Later, large numbers of Middle Eastern Jews
also moved to Israel, either to escape anti-Semitic violence or
because they were forcibly expelled.)
Communal violence between Jews and Arabs in British
Palestine began spiraling out of control. In 1947, the United
Nations approved a plan to divide British Palestine into two
mostly independent countries, one for Jews called Israel and one
for Arabs called Palestine. Jerusalem, holy city for Jews and
Muslims, was to be a special international zone.
The plan was never implemented. Arab leaders in the region saw it
as European colonial theft and, in 1948, invaded to keep Palestine
unified. The Israeli forces won the 1948 war, but they pushed well
beyond the UN-designated borders to claim land that was to have
been part of Palestine, including the western half of Jerusalem.
They also uprooted and expelled entire Palestinian communities,
creating about 700,000 refugees, whose descendants now number 7
million and are still considered refugees.
The 1948 war ended with Israel roughly controlling the
territory that you will see marked on today's maps as "Israel";
everything except for the West Bank and Gaza, which is where
most Palestinian fled to (many also ended up in refugee camps in
neighboring countries) and are today considered the Palestinian
territories. The borders between Israel and Palestine have been
disputed and fought over ever since. So has the status of those
Palestinian refugees and the status of Jerusalem.
That's the first major dimension of the conflict: reconciling
the division that opened in 1948. The second began in 1967, when
Israel put those two Palestinian territories under military
occupation.
2. Why is Israel occupying the Palestinian territories?
Israel's military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza began
in 1967. Up to that point, Gaza had been (more or less) controlled
by Egypt and the West Bank by Jordan. But in 1967 there was
another war between Israel and its Arab neighbors, during which
Israel occupied the two Palestinian territories. (Israel also took
control of Syria's Golan Heights, which it annexed in 1981, and
Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, which it returned to Egypt in 1982.)
 Israeli forces have occupied and controlled the West Bank ever
since. It withdrew its occupying troops and settlers from Gaza in
2005, but maintains a full blockade of the territory, which has
turned Gaza into what human rights organizations
sometimes call an "open-air prison" and has pushed the
unemployment rate up to 40 percent.
Israel says the occupation is necessary for security given its
tiny size: to protect Israelis from Palestinian attacks and to provide
a buffer from foreign invasions. But that does not explain the
settlers.
Settlers are Israelis who move into the West Bank. They are
widely considered to violate international law, which forbids an
occupying force from moving its citizens into occupied territory.
Many of the 500,000 settlers are just looking for cheap housing;
most live within a few miles of the Israeli border, often in the
around surrounding Jerusalem.
Others move deep into the West Bank to claim land for Jews, out
of religious fervor and/or a desire to see more or all of the West
Bank absorbed into Israel. While Israel officially forbids this and
often evicts these settlers, many are still able to take root.
In the short term, settlers of all forms make life for
Palestinians even more difficult, by forcing the Israeli government
to guard them with walls or soldiers that further constrain
Palestinians. In the long term, the settlers create what are
sometimes called "facts on the ground": Israeli communities that
blur the borders and expand land that Israel could claim for itself in
any eventual peace deal.
The Israeli occupation of the West Bank is all-consuming
for the Palestinians who live there, constrained by Israeli
checkpoints and 20-foot walls, subject to an Israeli military
justice system in which on average two children are arrested
every day, stuck with an economy stifled by strict Israeli border
control, and countless other indignities large and small.
3. Why is there fighting today between Israel and Gaza?
On the surface, this is just the latest round of fighting in 27
years of war between Israel and Hamas, a Palestinian militant
group that formed in 1987 seeks Israel's destruction and is
internationally recognized as a terrorist organization for its attacks
targeting civilians — and which since 2006 has ruled Gaza. Israeli
forces periodically attack Hamas and other militant groups in
Gaza, typically with air strikes but in 2006 and 2009 with ground
invasions. The latest round of fighting was sparked when
members of Hamas in the West Bank murdered three Israeli youths
who were studying there on June 10. Though the Hamas members
appear to have acted without approval from their leadership, which
nonetheless praised the attack, Israel responded by arresting large
numbers of Hamas personnel in the West Bank and with air strikes
against the group in Gaza.
 After some Israeli extremists murdered a Palestinian youth in
Jerusalem and Israeli security forces cracked down on protests,
compounding Palestinian outrage, Hamas and other Gaza groups
launched dozens of rockets into Israel, which responded with many
more air strikes. So far the fighting has killed one Israeli and 230
Palestinians; two UN agencies have separately estimated that 70-
plus percent of the fatalities are civilians. On Thursday, July 17,
Israeli ground forces invaded Gaza, which Israel says is to shut
down tunnels that Hamas could use to cross into Israel.
That get backs to that essential truth about the conflict today:
Palestinian civilians endure the brunt of it. While Israel targets
militants and Hamas targets civilians, Israel's disproportionate
military strength and its willingness to target militants based in
dense urban communities means that Palestinians civilians are far
more likely to be killed than any other group.
But those are just the surface reasons; there's a lot more going on
here as well.
4. How is the conflict going to end?
There are three ways the conflict could end. Only one of them
is both viable and peaceful — the two-state solution — but it is
also extremely difficult, and the more time goes on the harder it
gets.
One-state solution: The first is to erase the borders and put
Israelis and Palestinians together into one equal, pluralistic state,
called the "one-state solution." Very few people think this could be
viable for the simple reason of demographics; Arabs would very
soon outnumber Jews. After generations of feeling disenfranchised
and persecuted by Israel, the Arab majority would almost certainly
vote to dismantle everything that makes Israel a Jewish state.
Israelis, after everything they've done to finally achieve a Jewish
state after thousands of years of their own persecution, would
never surrender that state and willingly become a minority among
a population they see as hostile.
Destruction of one side: The second way this could end is
with one side outright vanquishing the other, in what would
certainly be a catastrophic abuse of human rights. This is the
option preferred by extremists such as Hamas and far-right Israeli
settlers. In the Palestinian extremist version, Israel is abolished and
replaced with a single Palestinian state; Jews become a minority,
most likely replacing today's conflict with an inverse conflict. In
the Israeli extremist version, Israel annexes the West Bank and
Gaza entirely, either turning Palestinians into second-class citizens
in the manner of apartheid South Africa or expelling them en
masse.
Two-state solution: The third option is for both Israelis and
Palestinians to have their own independent states; that's called the
"two-state solution" and it's advocated by most everyone as the
only option that would create long-term peace. But it requires
working out lots of details so thorny and difficult that it's not clear of "land swaps" in exchange for settler-occupied territory — but
if it will, or can, happen. Eventually, the conflict will have dragged it's still hard. The more time goes on, the more settlements expand,
on for so long that this solution will become impossible. the harder it becomes to create a viable Palestinian state.

Refugees: This one is really hard. There are, officially, seven

million Palestinian refugees, who are designated as such because
5. Why is it so hard to make peace? their descendants fled or were expelled from what is today Israel;
places like Ramla and Jaffa. Palestinians frequently ask for what
The one-state solution is hard because there is no viable,
they call the "right of return": permission to return to their land and
realistic version that both sides would accept. In theory, the two-
live with full rights. That sounds like a no-brainer, but Israel's
state solution is great. But it poses some very difficult questions.
objection is that if they absorb seven million Palestinian returnees,
Here are the four big ones and why they're so tough to solve. To be
then Jews will become a minority, which for the reasons explained
clear, these aren't abstract concepts but real, heavily debated issues
above Israelis will never accept. There are ideas to work around
that have sunk peace talks before:
the problem, like financial restitution, but no agreement on them.
Jerusalem: Both sides claim Jerusalem as their capital; it's also
Security: This is another big one. For Palestinians, security
a center of Jewish and Muslim (and Christian) holy sites that are
needs are simple: a sovereign Palestinian state. For Israelis, it's a
literally located physically on top of one another, in the antiquity-
bit more complicated: Israelis fear that an independent Palestine
era walled Old City that is not at all well shaped to be divided into
could turn hostile and ally with other Middle East states to launch
two countries. Making the division even tougher, Israeli
the sort of invasion Israel barely survived in 1973. Maybe more
communities have been building up more and more in and around
plausibly, Israelis worry that Hamas would take over an
the city.
independent West Bank and use it to launch attacks on Israelis, as
West Bank borders: There's no clear agreement on where
they've done with Gaza. Any compromise would likely involve
precisely to draw the borders, which roughly follow the armistice
Palestinians giving up some sovereignty, for example promising
line of the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, especially since hundreds of
permanent de-militarization or allowing an international
thousands of Israeli settlers have built up suburban-style
peacekeeping force, and after years of feeling heavily abused by
communities just on the Palestinian side of the line. This one is not
strong-handed Israeli forces, Palestinians are not eager about the
actually impossible — Israel could give Palestine some land as part
idea of Israel having veto power over their sovereignty and
security.

Those are all very difficult problems. But here's the thing: time
is running out. The more that the conflict drags on, the more
difficult it will be to solve any of these issues, much less all of
them. That will make it harder and harder for Israel to justify
keeping Gaza under blockade and the West Bank under
occupation; eventually it will have to unilaterally withdraw, which
the current leadership opposes, or it will have to annex the
territories and become either an apartheid-style state that denies
full rights to those new Palestinian citizens or abandon its Jewish
state.

Meanwhile, extremism and apathy and distrust are rising on

both sides. The violence of the conflict is becoming status quo, a
regularly recurring event that is replacing the peace process itself
as the way by which the conflict advances. It is making things
worse for Israelis and Palestinians alike all the time, and unless
they can break from the hatred and violence long enough to make
peace, that will continue.

All from: https://www.vox.com/2014/7/17/5902177/9-questions-about-the-israel-palestine-conflict-you-were-too