Israeli-Palestinian Crisis

Ottoman Empire/British Palestine

● During the years of the Ottoman Empire, Palestine was under its
control.
● Population: 87% Muslim, 10% Chrisitan, 3% Jewish via Ottoman
records.
● Arabic national language
● Jerusalem had roughly equal proportions of each religious group.
They lived peacefully together.
● The UK government in 1917, promised to give Jews a place to live
in Palestine in the Balfour Declaration.
● In 1916, the British promised secretly to the French that they would
cut up Arab territories and the British would keep Palestine.
● In 1915, the British told King of Mecca, Sharif Hussein, that he
could control a proposed Arab nation which included Palestine, if
he organized an Arab revolt against the Ottomans, and he did.
● After WW1, the Ottoman empire died, the British established a
colony called British Mandate of Palestine.
● They isolated, segregated, and separated religious groups and that
enticed divisions.
● They called Jews to come over to Palestine, and in 1938, Jews were
just below 30% of the population.
● The Jews purchased land from absentee non-Palestinian Arab
landowners, and evicted Palestinian farmers who lived there.
 ● Palestinian Arabs began to become nationlist, and dreamed of a
Palestinian state.
● In 1936, they revolted against the Brits. With Jewish militia's help,
the Brits suppressed the revolt and limited Jewish immigration,
calling for a joint Arab and Jewish state in 10 years.
● Zionists got mad because Holocaust was happening and Jews
needed to leave Europe and Palestinians are mad because they
didn’t want to wait 10 years for a state.
● Then WW2 ended, and Holocaust caused tensions to go up.

Holocaust/Rise of Zionism
● Simply put, Zionism is a movement to recreate a Jewish presence in
Israel.
● Throughout history, Jews have considered certain areas in Israel
sacred—as do Christians and Muslims. The Torah, the Jewish religious
text, depicts stories of ancient prophets who were instructed by their
God to return to this homeland.
● While the fundamental philosophies of the Zionist movement have
existed for hundreds of years, modern Zionism formally took root in the
late 19th century. Around that time, Jews throughout the world faced
growing anti-Semitism.
● Some historians believe that an increasingly tense atmosphere between
Jews and Europeans may have triggered the Zionism movement. In one
1894 incident, a Jewish officer in the French army named Alfred Dreyfus
was falsely accused and convicted of treason.
● This event, which became known as the “Dreyfus Affair,” sparked
outrage among Jewish people and many others.Modern Zionism was
officially established as a political organization by Theodor Herzl in
1897.
● A Jewish journalist and political activist from Austria, Herzl believed that
the Jewish population couldn’t survive if it didn’t have a nation of its
own.
● After the Dreyfus Affair, Herzl wrote Der Judenstaat (The Jewish State),
a pamphlet that called for political recognition of a Jewish homeland in
the area then known as Palestine.
● In 1897, Herzl organized the First Zionist Congress, which met in Basel,
Switzerland. He also formed and became the first president of the World
Zionist Organization.
● Although Herzl died in 1904—years before Israel was officially declared
a state—he’s often considered the father of modern Zionism.
● In 1917, British Foreign Secretary Arthur James Balfour wrote a letter to
Baron Rothschild, a wealthy and prominent leader in the British Jewish
community.
● In the brief correspondence, Balfour expressed the British government’s
support for the establishment of a Jewish home in Palestine. This letter
was published in the press one week later and eventually became
known as the “Balfour Declaration.”
● The text was included in the Mandate for Palestine—a document issued
by the League of Nations in 1923 that gave Great Britain the
responsibility of establishing a Jewish national homeland in
British-controlled Palestine.
● Two well-known Zionists, Chaim Weizmann and Nahum Sokolow,
played important roles in obtaining the Balfour Declaration.
● Many Jews living in Russia and Europe suffered horrific persecution and
death during Russian pogroms and under Nazi rule. Most historians
estimate that about 6 million Jews were killed in Europe during the
Holocaust.
● In the years before and during World War II, thousands of European
Jews fled to Palestine or other regions to escape hostility. After the
Holocaust ended, Zionist leaders actively promoted the idea of an
independent Jewish nation.
● With the end of Great Britain’s mandate in Palestine and the British
army’s withdrawal, Israel was officially declared an independent state on
May 14, 1948.
 ● The rise of Zionism led to massive Jewish immigration into Israel. About
35,000 Jews relocated to the area between 1882 and 1903. Another
40,000 made their way to the homeland between 1904 and 1914.
● Most Jews—about 57 percent of them—lived in Europe in 1939.
However, by the end of World War II, only about 35 percent of the
Jewish population still resided in European countries.
● In 1949, more than 249,000 Jewish settlers moved to Israel. This was
the largest number of immigrants to arrive in a single year.
● The Jewish population in Israel increased from about 500,000 in 1945 to
5.6 million in 2010. Today, around 43 percent of the world’s Jews live in
Israel.
● Many self-proclaimed Zionists disagree with each other about
fundamental principles. Some followers of Zionism are devoutly
religious while others are more secular.
● “Zionist lefts” typically want a less-religious government and support
giving up some Israeli-controlled land in exchange for peace with Arab
nations. “Zionist rights” defend their rights to land and prefer a
government based strongly on Jewish religious traditions.
● Advocates of the Zionist movement see it as an important effort to offer
refuge to persecuted minorities and reestablish settlements in Israel.
Critics, however, say it’s an extreme ideology that discriminates against
non-Jews.
● For example, under Israel’s 1950 Law of Return, Jews born anywhere in
the world have the right to become an Israeli citizen, while other people
aren’t granted this privilege.
● Arabs and Palestinians living in and around Israel typically oppose
Zionism. Many international Jews also disapprove of the movement
because they don’t believe a national homeland is essential to their
religion.

First Intifada
● (December 1987-September 1993)
● The proximate causes of the first intifada were intensified Israeli land
expropriation and settlement construction in the West Bank and Gaza
 Strip after the electoral victory of the right-wing Likud party in 1977;
increasing Israeli repression in response to heightened Palestinian
protests following the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982;
● the emergence of a new cadre of local Palestinian activists who
challenged the leadership of the Palestine Liberation Organization
(PLO), a process aided by Israel’s stepped-up attempts to curb political
activism and break the PLO’s ties to the occupied territories in the early
1980s; and, in reaction to the invasion of Lebanon, the emergence of a
strong peace camp on the Israeli side, which many Palestinians thought
provided a basis for change in Israeli policy.
● With motivation, means, and perceived opportunity in place, only a
precipitant was required to start an uprising.
● This occurred in December 1987 when an Israeli vehicle struck two vans
carrying Palestinian workers, killing four of them, an event that was
perceived by Palestinians as an act of revenge for the death by stabbing
of an Israeli in Gaza a few days earlier.
● Most of the Palestinian rioting took place during the intifada’s first year,
after which the Palestinians shifted from throwing rocks and Molotov
cocktails at Israeli targets to attacking them with rifles, hand grenades,
and explosives.
● The shift occurred mainly because of the severity of Israeli military and
police reprisals, which intensified after Palestinian attacks became more
violent. According to the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem, nearly
2,000 deaths due to violence occurred during the first intifada; the ratio
of Palestinian to Israeli deaths was slightly more than 3 to 1.
● . In 1988 the PLO accepted American conditions for opening a
U.S.-Palestinian dialogue: rejection of terrorism, recognition of Israel’s
right to exist, and acceptance of United Nations Security Council
Resolutions 242 (which called upon Arab states to accept Israel’s right
“to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries”) and 338
 (which called for the implementation of Resolution 242 “in all its
parts”).
● With the intifada proving to be politically and economically damaging to
Israel, a new Israeli government was elected in 1992 with a mandate to
negotiate for peace.
● In the following year secret talks between Israel and the PLO under the
auspices of the Norwegian government resulted in the Oslo Accords, a
series of agreements signed in 1993–95.
● The accords reiterated the PLO’s 1988 commitments, and Israel
recognized the PLO as the Palestinian people’s legitimate representative,
agreed to withdraw in stages from areas of the West Bank and Gaza, and
allowed the creation of a Palestinian Authority to govern those areas.
● Outstanding matters in achieving a two-state solution were to be settled
over the next five years.

Second Intifada
● The second intifada was much more violent than the first.
● During the approximately five-year uprising, more than 4,300 fatalities
were registered, and again the ratio of Palestinian to Israeli deaths was
slightly more than 3 to 1.
● In March 2002, following an especially horrific suicide bombing that
killed 30 people, the Israeli army launched Operation Defensive Shield
to reoccupy the West Bank and parts of Gaza.
● One year later Israel started building a separation barrier in the West
Bank to match a similar barrier erected in Gaza in 1996.
● Also helping to suppress the uprising were more than 200 state-directed
assassinations of Palestinian military operatives and political leaders.
 ● Although the violence had nearly subsided by the end of 2005, the
conditions causing it had in some respects worsened.
● Israeli settlement activity in the West Bank continued, and tight controls
were placed on the movement of Palestinian goods and people, stifling
economic growth. Negotiations were at a standstill.
● In addition, the Palestinian Authority lost support amid charges of
widespread corruption.
● Many Palestinians now turned to Hamas, which won the 2006
legislative elections and took power by force in Gaza in 2007.

Jerusalem
● Israel considers Jerusalem its capital. Jerusalem has been divided
by Israel and Palestine for 70+ years, yet it’s 5000+ years old.
● Israel and Palestine’s dueling claims to the city are steeped in decades
of conflict, during which Jewish settlers pushed Muslim Arabs out of
their homes and established the state of Israel on their land in the
middle of the 20th century.
● But the claims are also tied to the religions of Judaism and Islam, both
of which recognize Jerusalem as a holy place.
● On December 6, 2017, President Donald Trump broke with previous
U.S. foreign policy and announced that the U.S. would recognize
Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, effectively endorsing Israeli control of the
city. On May 14, 2018, the U.S. relocated its embassy to Jerusalem
from Tel Aviv.
● Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are strongly tied to the ancient city, and
followers of each of these religions have controlled all or part of the city
over the past few thousand years.
● In 1,000 B.C.E., King David established Jewish control over Jerusalem.
The city fell in and out of other hands during the next couple of millenia;
particularly during the crusades, when Christian crusaders fought
competing Christian and Muslim factions for control of the city. And
between 1517 and 1917, the Ottoman Empire—whose official religion
was Islam—ruled the city
● Jerusalem features prominently in the Hebrew Bible. In the Jewish
tradition, it is the place where Abraham, the first Patriarch of Judaism,
nearly sacrificed his son Isaac to God thousands of years ago.
● Later, Abraham’s grandson Jacob (who took the name “Israel”) learned
that Jerusalem is “the site that the Lord your God will choose from
among all your tribes, as a place established in His name,” according to
the Book of Deuteronomy.
● Jerusalem was the capital of King David’s Israel in the Hebrew Bible, as
well as the city where David’s son Solomon built his temple.
● In biblical times, Jewish people who could not make a pilgrimage to the
city were supposed to pray in the direction of it.
● According to the Quran, Jerusalem was also the last place the Prophet
Muhammad visited before he ascended to the heavens and talked to
God in the seventh century.
● Before that, he was flown from Mecca to Jerusalem overnight by a
mythical creature.
● Both this miraculous night journey and his communion with God are
important events in Islam. During the night journey, Muhammad was
purified in preparation for his meeting with God.
● Once in heaven, God told Muhammad that he should recite the salat, or
ritual prayer, 50 times each day. However, Muhammad begged God to
reduce the number to five times a day, which is the current standard for
Muslim prayer.
● Muhammad saw his mission as an extension of the Abrahamic
traditions of Judaism and Christianity. Therefore, the first Qibla, or
direction in which Muslims should pray, was Jerusalem (today, Muslims
bow towards Mecca).
● In addition, Islamic tradition predicts that Jerusalem will play an
important role in the future, naming it as one of the cities where the end
of the world will play out.
● Though the world doesn’t appear to be ending there right now, Trump’s
announcement has increased tensions in the region. The president’s
decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital drew praise from
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and condemnation from
Palestinian allies who worried that this move would make it more difficult
to negotiate a long-sought peace treaty between the states.
 ● And in fact, hours before Trump’s announcement, the Palestinian
general delegate to the U.K. stated that if the U.S. president recognized
Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, he would effectively be “declaring
war.”

Palestinian Refugees
● A Palestinian refugee is any Palestinian who fled, was expelled, or was forced into
exile from his/her home in the area of historic Palestine or who has been refused
reentry to their home in historic Palestine after having traveled abroad during the
period between 1948 and today.
● Approximately 750,000 Palestinians were displaced and became refugees as a
result of the 1948 war which led to the founding of Israel.
● None of these displaced persons were ever allowed to return to the homes or
communities from which they were displaced and the Palestinian refugee
population has continued to grow in the time that has passed since 1948.
● Today there are more than 7 million Palestinian refugees scattered around the
world.
● The largest group of Palestinian refugees is made up of Palestinians who fled or
were expelled from their homes as a result of the partition of historic Palestine in
1948 as well as their descendants.
● As of 2014 this included approximately 5 million refugees who are registered with
the United Nations Relief and Works Agency and an additional one million
Palestinians who were displaced in 1948 but who could not or did not register
with UNRWA for assistance.
● The second largest group of refugees is made up of those Palestinians who were
displaced for the first time from their homes and communities in 1967 as well as
their descendants. There are approximately one million Palestinian refugees from
1967.
● The third group of Palestinian refugees includes Palestinians who have been
internally displaced, i.e. Palestinians who were forced to flee their homes or
villages in 1948 and 1967 and who were not allowed to return to their homes, but
who remain present in either Israel or the occupied Palestinian territories. At
present there are approximately 350,000 Palestinians who live within the post
1948 borders of Israel and who hold Israeli citizenship who were displaced from
their homes in 1948 and who are still not allowed to return to their historic
homes, villages, and land - all of which are located within Israel’s post 1948
borders.
● An additional 130,000 Palestinians are people or the descendants of people who
were internally displaced in the occupied Palestinian territory as a result of the
1967 War.
● Finally, there are an unknown number of Palestinians who have been expelled
from or refused return to the occupied Palestinian territory since 1967. This
includes people who have had their ID cards and residency rights revoked, people
denied family reunification, and people who have been deported and exiled
● It is often claimed that Palestinians left their homes in 1948 voluntarily or at the
behest of Arab leaders.
● However, these claims are not supported by the historic record[v] which show
that the vast majority of the 750,000 Palestinians displaced in 1947 and 1948 fled
from their homes as a direct result of targeted violence and threats to their
safety.[vi]
● Many Palestinians who fled attempted to return to their homes during or after
the end of the fighting but were blocked from returning by Israeli forces.
● The systematic displacement of Palestinians also began well before the UN
Partition Plan formally went into effect on May 15th 1948, which is the date that
marks the beginning of formal hostilities between the Israeli military and forces
from surrounding Arab countries.
● Violent conflict between Palestinians and Jewish forces began as early as
November 1947 and continued unabated until May 1948.
● The early months of the conflict witnessed limited back and forth violence
between irregular Palestinian forces and the much more organize Jewish forces
including the Hagganah, Irgun, and Palmach.
● The nature of the conflict changed dramatically in February and March of 1948
when Jewish forces began systematically depopulating Palestinian communities.
● On February 15th 1948 all of the residents of the villages of Qisarya, Barrat
Qisarya, Khirbat Al-Burj, and Atlit which are near present day Cesarea were
forced from their homes.
● This was the first time during the conflict when villages were completely
depopulated. [vii]
● The practice of depopulating and destroying Palestinian communities was turned
into official government policy by “Plan Dalet” which was finalized by the
pre-state Jewish leadership in March 1948.
● At the point when the United Nations Partition Plan officially went into effect on
May 15, 1948 between 250,000 and 300,000 Palestinians had already been
expelled from their homes and communities, including most of the population of
major Palestinian communities such as Safed, Haifa, Acre, and Jaffa.
● These numbers represent a majority of the Palestinian population that lived in
the area designated for the establishment of a Jewish state by the United Nations
Partition Plan.
● After May 15th 1948 the War expanded and Israeli forces took over portions of the
territory that was set aside for the establishment of a Palestinian state through
the Partition Plan and expelled much of the population that lived in these areas.
● By the end of the war approximately 750,000 Palestinians had been made
refugees and between 500 and 600 Palestinian villages had been depopulated.
Many of these communities were later destroyed.
● The Palestinians who were displaced in 1948 were not allowed to return to the
places from which they were displaced because their presence was seen as a
threat to the maintenance of a sustainable Jewish demographic majority in the
new state.
● Jews were only a slim majority of the population (55 percent Jewish vs. 45
percent Palestinian) in the area proposed for the state.
● They also owned less than 10% of the land in the area set aside for the new Jewish
state and were clear demographic minorities in both the northern (Eastern
Galilee) and southern (Negev) sectors of the proposed state where they
constituted approximately 30 percent and 1 percent of the population
respectively.
● The Jewish population was only a majority in the middle (coastal) section of the
proposed state, but even here 65 percent of the Jewish population lived in the two
cities of Tel Aviv and Haifa meaning that Palestinians were the majority
population in nearly all of the area set aside for the new Jewish State.[x]
● The decision to prevent Palestinians from returning to their homes was therefore
not motivated by a fear of violence by returning refugees, but rather was a
decision made as the result of the Israeli government’s recognition that allowing
Palestinian refugees to return would have turned Israel into a bi-national state
with a Jewish minority.
● Palestinian refugees’ right to return to the homes from which they were displaced
is well established in international law.
● In Jordan nearly 95% of all Palestinian refugees have been given citizenship and
are able to participate in Jordanian political and economic life. Most registered
Palestinian refugees in Jordan (over 80%) also do not live in the ten UNRWA run
camps located in Jordan.
● The majority of Palestinian refugees continue to reside in either the occupied
Palestinian territory or surrounding countries. Of the refugees registered with
UNRWA over 40% (approximately two million) live in Jordan.
● More than one million (23%) UNRWA registered refugees live in Gaza, nearly
760,000 (16%) live in the West Bank, 462,000 live in Syria[1], and approximately
420,000 live in Lebanon.[xiii]
● Refugees not registered with UNRWA live in countries around the world, with
some of the largest refugee populations located in Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt,
Gulf Countries, Chile, and the United States.
 ● The rights granted to Palestinian refugees vary from country to country.
Palestinian refugees who are not registered with UNRWA generally hold
citizenship, immigrant, or temporary resident status in the countries where they
are located.
● Their legal status is usually consistent with other people holding their same legal
status in the country where they reside. The status of UNRWA refugees in
Lebanon, Jordan, and Syria is more complicated.
● On the other hand, most Palestinian refugees in Lebanon live inside UNRWA
run camps and their rights are severely restricted by the Lebanese government.
● They have not been granted Lebanese citizenship and are instead considered
foreigners.
● They have almost no political rights and are denied many social rights including
access to government run public services such as education, healthcare, and
social security.
● UNRWA is the primary provider of these services to Palestinian refugees in
Lebanon. Palestinian refugees in Lebanon are also blocked from obtaining
employment in many professions.
● Prior to the recent Syrian civil war, Palestinian refugees in Syria were integrated
into Syrian society and were granted access to government services and
employment.
● They were not granted citizenship however and their rights to own property were
limited.
● It is important to note that many of the Palestinian refugees in Syria have been
displaced as a result of the Syrian war and Palestinians who remain in Syria have
suffered together with other Syrians as a result of the war.
● The Israeli government does not recognize Palestinian refugees’ right to return
and continues to say that Palestinian refugees and their descendants cannot be
allowed to return to the homes and communities from which they were displaced
because their return would be a threat to the maintenance of a continued Jewish
demographic majority in Israel.

Peace Process
● 1978: A peace deal between Egyptian President Anwar Sadat
and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, known as the Camp
David accords, is brokered on Sept. 17, 1978, by President Jimmy
Carter. Potential Palestinian peace proposals were discussed, but
never carried out.
 ● 1993: The first of two pacts, known as the Oslo accords, are
signed between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization,
setting out a peace process based on previous U.N. resolutions.
(A follow-up accord was signed in 1995.) The agreements created
the Palestinian Authority, to oversee most administrative affairs
in the West Bank and Gaza. The PLO is recognized by Israel and
the United States as a negotiating partner. Left unresolved,
however, are key issues such as Israeli settlements in the West
Bank and the status of Jerusalem, which is viewed by the
Palestinians as the capital of any future state.
● December 2017: The Trump administration recognizes
Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and announces that it plans to
shift the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv, stirring outrage from
Palestinians.

Yom Kippur War

● On October 6, 1973, hoping to win back territory lost to Israel during the
third Arab-Israeli war, in 1967, Egyptian and Syrian forces launched a
coordinated attack against Israel on Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the
Jewish calendar.
● Taking the Israeli Defense Forces by surprise, Egyptian troops swept
deep into the Sinai Peninsula, while Syria struggled to throw occupying
Israeli troops out of the Golan Heights. Israel counterattacked and
recaptured the Golan Heights.
● A cease-fire went into effect on October 25, 1973.
● Israel’s victory came at the cost of heavy casualties, and Israelis
criticized the government’s lack of preparedness. In April 1974, the
nation’s prime minister, Golda Meir (1898-1978), stepped down.
● Although Egypt had again suffered military defeat at the hands of its
Jewish neighbor, the initial Egyptian successes greatly enhanced
Sadat’s prestige in the Middle East and gave him an opportunity to seek
peace. In 1974, the first of two Egyptian-Israeli disengagement
agreements providing for the return of portions of the Sinai to Egypt
 were signed, and in 1978 Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem
Begin (1913-92) signed the first peace agreement between Israel and
one of its Arab neighbors.
● In 1982, Israel fulfilled the 1979 peace treaty by returning the last
segment of the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt.
● For Syria, the Yom Kippur War was a disaster. The unexpected
Egyptian-Israeli cease-fire exposed Syria to military defeat, and Israel
seized even more territory in the Golan Heights. In 1979, Syria voted
with other Arab states to expel Egypt from the Arab League.
●

1948 War
● On November 29, 1947, the United Nations General Assembly adopted
Resolution 181 (also known as the Partition Resolution) that would divide
Great Britain’s former Palestinian mandate into Jewish and Arab states in
May 1948. Under the resolution, the area of religious significance
surrounding Jerusalem would remain under international control
administered by the United Nations.
● The Palestinian Arabs refused to recognize this arrangement, which they
regarded as favorable to the Jews and unfair to the Arab population that
would remain in Jewish territory under the partition. The United States
sought a middle way by supporting the United Nations resolution, but also
encouraging negotiations between Arabs and Jews in the Middle East.
● The United Nations resolution sparked conflict between Jewish and Arab
groups within Palestine.
● Fighting began with attacks by irregular bands of Palestinian Arabs attached
to local units of the Arab Liberation Army composed of volunteers from
Palestine and neighboring Arab countries.
● These groups launched their attacks against Jewish cities, settlements, and
armed forces. The Jewish forces were composed of the Haganah, the
underground militia of the Jewish community in Palestine, and two small
irregular groups, the Irgun, and LEHI.
● The goal of the Arabs was initially to block the Partition Resolution and to
prevent the establishment of the Jewish state. The Jews, on the other hand,
hoped to gain control over the territory allotted to them under the Partition
Plan.
 ● After Israel declared its independence on May 14, 1948, the fighting
intensified with other Arab forces joining the Palestinian Arabs in attacking
territory in the former Palestinian mandate. On the eve of May 14, the Arabs
launched an air attack on Tel Aviv, which the Israelis resisted. This action
was followed by the invasion of the former Palestinian mandate by Arab
armies from Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Egypt. Saudi Arabia sent a formation
that fought under the Egyptian command. British trained forces from
Transjordan eventually intervened in the conflict, but only in areas that had
been designated as part of the Arab state under the United Nations Partition
Plan and the corpus separatum of Jerusalem. After tense early fighting,
Israeli forces, now under joint command, were able to gain the offensive.
● Though the United Nations brokered two cease-fires during the conflict,
fighting continued into 1949. Israel and the Arab states did not reach any
formal armistice agreements until February.
● Under separate agreements between Israel and the neighboring states of
Egypt, Lebanon, Transjordan, and Syria, these bordering nations agreed to
formal armistice lines.
● Israel gained some territory formerly granted to Palestinian Arabs under the
United Nations resolution in 1947. Egypt and Jordan retained control over
the Gaza Strip and the West Bank respectively.

U.S./International Involvement
● US supplies Israel with weapons and armory
● Most western nations recognize Israel, not Palestine.
● 28 countries, mostly Muslim Majority, do not recognize Israel.

Hamas
● From the late 1970s, activists connected with the Islamist Muslim
Brotherhood established a network of charities, clinics, and schools and
became active in the territories (the Gaza Strip and West Bank) occupied
by Israel after the 1967 Six-Day War.
● n Gaza they were active in many mosques, while their activities in the
West Bank generally were limited to the universities.
● The Muslim Brotherhood’s activities in these areas were generally
nonviolent, but a number of small groups in the occupied territories
began to call for jihad, or holy war, against Israel.
● In December 1987, at the beginning of the Palestinian intifada (Arabic
intifāḍah, “shaking off”) uprising against Israeli occupation, Hamas
(which also is an Arabic word meaning “zeal”) was established by
members of the Muslim Brotherhood and religious factions of the PLO,
and the new organization quickly acquired a broad following.
● In its 1988 charter, Hamas maintained that Palestine is an Islamic
homeland that can never be surrendered to non-Muslims and that
waging holy war to wrest control of Palestine from Israel is a religious
duty for Palestinian Muslims.
● This position brought it into conflict with the PLO, which in 1988
recognized Israel’s right to exist.
● Hamas soon began to act independently of other Palestinian
organizations, generating animosity between the group and its secular
nationalist counterparts.
● Increasingly violent Hamas attacks on civilian and military targets
impelled Israel to arrest a number of Hamas leaders in 1989, including
Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the movement’s founder.
● In the years that followed, Hamas underwent reorganization to reinforce
its command structure and locate key leaders out of Israel’s reach.
● A political bureau responsible for the organization’s international
relations and fund-raising was formed in Amman, Jordan, electing
Khaled Meshaal as its head in 1996, and the group’s armed wing was
reconstituted as the ʿIzz al-Dīn al-Qassām Forces.
● Jordan expelled Hamas leaders from Amman in 1999, accusing them of
having used their Jordanian offices as a command post for military
activities in the West Bank and Gaza.
● In 2001 the political bureau established new headquarters in Damascus,
Syria. It moved again in 2012, to Doha, Qatar, after leadership failed to
support the Assad government in its crackdown on the Syrian uprising.

● After Hamas took control of the Gaza Strip in 2007, Israel declared the
Gaza Strip under Hamas a hostile entity and approved a series of
sanctions that included power cuts, heavily restricted imports, and
border closures.
● Hamas attacks on Israel continued, as did Israeli attacks on the Gaza
Strip. After months of negotiations, in June 2008 Israel and Hamas
agreed to implement a truce scheduled to last six months; however, the
truce was threatened shortly thereafter as each accused the other of
violations, which escalated in the last months of the agreement.
● On December 19 the truce officially expired amid accusations of
violations on both sides. Broader hostilities erupted shortly thereafter as
Israel, responding to sustained rocket fire, mounted a series of air
strikes across the region—among the strongest in years—meant to target
Hamas.
● After a week of air strikes, Israeli forces initiated a ground campaign
into the Gaza Strip amid calls from the international community for a
cease-fire. Following more than three weeks of hostilities—in which
perhaps more than 1,000 were killed and tens of thousands were left
homeless—Israel and Hamas each declared a unilateral cease-fire.
● Beginning on November 14, 2012, Israel launched a series of air strikes
in Gaza in response to an increase in the number of rockets fired from
Gaza into Israeli territory over the previous nine months.
 ● The head of the ʿIzz al-Dīn al-Qassām Forces, Ahmed Said Khalil
al-Jabari, was killed in the initial strike. Hamas retaliated with
increasing rocket attacks on Israel, and hostilities continued until Israel
and Hamas reached a cease-fire agreement on November 21.
● In 2014 tensions between Israel and Hamas rose following the
disappearance of three Israeli teenagers in the West Bank on June 12.
● Netanyahu accused Hamas of having abducted the youths, and he vowed
not to let the crime go unpunished. Israeli security forces launched a
massive sweep in the West Bank to search for the missing boys and to
crack down on members of Hamas and other militant groups; several
hundred Palestinians suspected of having militant ties were arrested,
including several leaders of Hamas in the West Bank.
● On June 30 the boys were found dead in the West Bank, outside of
Hebron.

1967 War

● The Six-Day War came on the heels of several decades of political

tension and military conflict between Israel and the Arab states.
● In 1948, following disputes surrounding the founding of Israel, a
coalition of Arab nations had launched a failed invasion of the nascent
Jewish state as part of the First Arab-Israeli War.
● A second major conflict known as the Suez Crisis erupted in 1956,
when Israel, the United Kingdom and France staged a controversial
attack on Egypt in response to Egyptian President Gamal Abdel
Nasser’s nationalization of the Suez Canal.
● A series of border disputes were the major spark for the Six-Day War.
By the mid-1960s, Syrian-backed Palestinian guerillas had begun
 staging attacks across the Israeli border, provoking reprisal raids from
the Israel Defense Forces.
● In April 1967, the skirmishes worsened after Israel and Syria fought a
ferocious air and artillery engagement in which six Syrian fighter jets
were destroyed.
● In the wake of the April air battle, the Soviet Union provided Egypt with
intelligence that Israel was moving troops to its northern border with
Syria in preparation for a full-scale invasion. The information was
inaccurate, but it nevertheless stirred Egyptian President Gamal Abdel
Nasser into action.
● In a show of support for his Syrian allies, he ordered Egyptian forces to
advance into the Sinai Peninsula, where they expelled a United Nations
peacekeeping force that had been guarding the border with Israel for
over a decade.
● In the days that followed, Nasser continued to rattle the saber: On May
22, he banned Israeli shipping from the Straits of Tiran, the sea passage
connecting the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aqaba. A week later, he sealed
a defense pact with King Hussein of Jordan.
● As the situation in the Middle East deteriorated, American President
Lyndon B. Johnson cautioned both sides against firing the first shot and
attempted to garner support for an international maritime operation to
reopen the Straits of Tiran.
● The plan never materialized, however, and by early June 1967, Israeli
leaders had voted to counter the Arab military buildup by launching a
preemptive strike.
● On June 5, 1967, the Israel Defense Forces initiated Operation Focus, a
coordinated aerial attack on Egypt. That morning, some 200 aircraft
took off from Israel and swooped west over the Mediterranean before
converging on Egypt from the north.
● After catching the Egyptians by surprise, they assaulted 18 different
airfields and eliminated roughly 90 percent of the Egyptian air force as it
sat on the ground. Israel then expanded the range of its attack and
decimated the air forces of Jordan, Syria and Iraq.
● By the end of the day on June 5, Israeli pilots had won full control of the
skies over the Middle East.
● Israel all but secured victory by establishing air superiority, but fierce
fighting continued for several more days. The ground war in Egypt
began on June 5. In concert with the air strikes, Israeli tanks and
infantry stormed across the border and into the Sinai Peninsula and the
Gaza Strip.
● Egyptian forces put up a spirited resistance, but later fell into disarray
after Field Marshal Abdel Hakim Amer ordered a general retreat. Over
the next several days, Israeli forces pursued the routed Egyptians
across the Sinai, inflicting severe casualties.
● A second front in the Six-Day War opened on June 5, when Jordan –
reacting to false reports of an Egyptian victory – began shelling Israeli
positions in Jerusalem. Israel responded with a devastating
counterattack on East Jerusalem and the West Bank.
● On June 7, Israeli troops captured the Old City of Jerusalem and
celebrated by praying at the Western Wall.
● The last phase of the fighting took place along Israel’s northeastern
border with Syria. On June 9, following an intense aerial bombardment,
Israeli tanks and infantry advanced on a heavily fortified region of Syria
called the Golan Heights. They successfully captured the Golan the next
day.
● On June 10, 1967, a United Nations-brokered ceasefire took effect and
the Six-Day War came to an abrupt end. It was later estimated that
some 20,000 Arabs and 800 Israelis had died in just 132 hours of
fighting.
● The leaders of the Arab states were left shocked by the severity of their
defeat. Egyptian President Nasser even resigned in disgrace, only to
promptly return to office after Egyptian citizens showed their support
with massive street demonstrations.
● The Six-Day War had momentous geopolitical consequences in the
Middle East. Victory in the war led to a surge of national pride in Israel,
which had tripled in size, but it also fanned the flames of the Arab-Israeli
conflict.
● Still wounded by their defeat in the Six-Day War, Arab leaders met in
Khartoum, Sudan, in August 1967, and signed a resolution that
promised “no peace, no recognition and no negotiation” with Israel.
 ● Led by Egypt and Syria, the Arab states later launched a fourth major
conflict with Israel during 1973’s Yom Kippur War.
● By claiming the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, the state of Israel also
absorbed over one million Palestinian Arabs.
● Several hundred thousand Palestinians later fled Israeli rule, worsening
a refugee crisis that had begun during the First Arab-Israeli War in 1948
and laying the groundwork for ongoing political turmoil and violence.
● Since 1967, the lands Israel seized in the Six-Day War have been at the
center of efforts to end the Arab-Israeli conflict.
● Israel returned the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt in 1982 as part of a peace
treaty and then withdrew from the Gaza Strip in 2005, but it has
continued to occupy and settle other territory claimed in the Six-Day
War, most notably the Golan Heights and the West Bank.

Occupation of West Bank/Golan Heights/Gaza Strip

● Israel continued to deny asylum-seekers access to a fair and prompt

refugee status determination process, leaving many without access to
basic services. About 31,000 asylum-seekers were living in Israel.
● Israeli forces frequently used excessive force against protesters in Kufr
Qadum who continued weekly protests against settlements and
settlement expansion. According to OCHA, 214 protesters and
bystanders were injured during the year.
● On 15 February, Israeli forces shot and injured in the eye nine-year-old
Malek Issa while he was returning home from school in the East
Jerusalem neighborhood of Issawiya. No clashes were recorded at the
time, according to OCHA. Israeli forces were maintaining a violent and
intense police operation in Issawiya as a form of collective punishment.
● Israeli forces frequently opened fire on fishermen and farmers in Gaza.
According to Al Mezan Center for Human Rights, 12 fishermen and five
farmers were injured.
● On 30 July, Israeli forces arrested Mahmoud Nawajaa, a human rights
defender and co-ordinator of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions
movement in the occupied West Bank, from his home in Ramallah. A
prisoner of conscience, he was released without charge on 17 August.
● On 13 November, the Jerusalem District Court rejected a petition by
Amnesty International against the arbitrary and punitive travel ban
imposed on its employee, human rights defender Laith Abu Zeyad. For
undisclosed reasons, Israeli security forces continued to bar him from
entering occupied East Jerusalem and from traveling abroad through
Jordan.
● Israel demolished 848 Palestinian residential and livelihood structures in
the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, displacing 996
people, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian
Affairs (OCHA). Israeli authorities said many of the demolished buildings
lacked Israeli-issued permits, which are virtually impossible for
Palestinians to obtain, or were in closed military zones. The law of
occupation prohibits such destruction unless necessary for military
operations.
● In other cases, Israel confiscated residential and livelihood structures,
including some that were donated for humanitarian purposes. Israeli
forces also punitively demolished at least six Palestinian homes, leaving
22 people, including seven children, homeless, according to B’Tselem.
Punitive demolitions constitute collective punishment and are prohibited
under international law.
● Israeli settler organizations initiated, with the support of the Israeli
authorities, forcible evictions of Palestinians from their homes in East
Jerusalem.
● OCHA estimated in December that around 200 Palestinian households
in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, had eviction
cases pending against them, placing 800 adults and children at risk of
displacement.
● In December, the Israeli Health Ministry began the distribution of
COVID-19 vaccines that excluded the nearly 5 million Palestinians who
live under Israeli military occupation in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
● Israel continued to discriminate against Palestinian citizens of Israel in
areas of planning, budget allocation, policing and political participation.
According to the Adalah-The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in
Israel, Israel maintains over 65 laws that discriminate against
Palestinians.
● Local Palestinian councils in Israel went on strike to protest against
discrimination in the distribution of the state budget for local councils.
The vast majority of Palestinians in Israel, comprising over 20% of the
total population, live in around 139 towns and villages. They received
only 1.7% of the state budget for local councils.
● In August, Adalah and the Arab Center for Alternative Planning filed a
petition to the Israeli Supreme Court on behalf of 10 local Palestinian
councils and dozens of Palestinian citizens of Israel against government
policy discriminating against these communities in the distribution of
housing, construction and land development benefits compared to
neighbouring Jewish communities that enjoy higher socio-economic
status and have access to such benefits.
● Israel continued to deny Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza
married to Palestinian citizens of Israel the right to nationality by
enforcing the discriminatory Entry to Israel La
● Palestinian civilians, including children, from the OPT were prosecuted
in military courts that did not meet international fair trial standards.
● Israel maintained its illegal blockade on the Gaza Strip, subjecting its
residents to collective punishment and deepening the humanitarian
crisis there. It also continued to restrict freedom of movement of
Palestinians in the OPT through checkpoints and roadblocks.
● During the May 2021 rise in violence, 198 Palestinians, including 58
children, were killed in Gaza. 10 people, including two children, were
killed in Israel.
● In July, a district court rejected a case to force the Ministry of Defense to
revoke the export license of spyware company NSO Group, dealing a
blow to victims of unlawful and targeted international surveillance.
● Israeli authorities conducted hundreds of raids throughout the West
Bank to arrest Palestinians, usually at their homes at night. Those
arrested were detained in prisons in Israel, along with thousands of
other Palestinians from the OPT arrested in previous years. This
violated international humanitarian law, which prohibits the transfer of
detainees into the territory of the occupying power.
● Israeli authorities used renewable administrative detention orders to
hold Palestinians without charge or trial. Some 4,300 Palestinians from
the OPT, including 397 administrative detainees, were held in Israeli
 prisons as of December, according to the Israel Prison Service. Many
families of Palestinian detainees in Israel, particularly those living in
Gaza, were not permitted entry to Israel to visit their relatives.
● On 16 July, Israeli forces arrested Iyad Barghouti, an astrophysicist and
professor at Jerusalem’s Al-Quds University, at a checkpoint near
Jerusalem and placed him in administrative detention. He had
previously been administratively detained in 2014 and 2016.
● Israel held 157 Palestinian children in prison, including two in
administrative detention, as of October. Defense for Children
International Palestine said that children were interrogated without their
parents present and placed with adults in prison. Under international
law, detention of children should be a measure of last resort and for the
shortest appropriate time.

https://www.britannica.com/topic/intifada
https://www.afsc.org/resource/palestinian-refugees-an
d-right-return
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Hamas
https://www.history.com/topics/middle-east/zionism
https://www.history.com/news/why-jews-and-muslims-
both-have-religious-claims-on-jerusalem
https://www.history.com/topics/middle-east/six-day-wa
r
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1wo2TLlMhiw
https://www.history.com/topics/middle-east/yom-kippu
r-war
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/05/13/isr
ael-palestinians-timeline-conflict/
https://history.state.gov/milestones/1945-1952/arab-isr
aeli-war
https://www.amnestyusa.org/countries/israel-and-occu
pied-palestinian-territories/