The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict is the ongoing, wide-ranging, often violent struggle between Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs centred around each side’s right to live in – and claim as their own – the Middle East region often referred to as The Holy Land; in particular the ancient city of Jerusalem and its surroundings, which hold high religious significance for all three Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity and Islam).
Although the state of Israel has only technically existed since shortly after World War 2, this conflict forms part of a much longer running struggle between Jews and Arabs for dominance in the region and sadly shows little sign of being resolved any time soon. The conflict is currently being waged by the Israeli government on one side and the two parties of Palestinian opposition, Fatah and Hamas, on the other. A two-state solution is generally agreed to be the best and only way forward, but significant disagreement on the detail of achieving that has for decades prevented this solution becoming a reality. Resolving this difficult conflict will be one of the major barriers to surmount if humans are ever to actually achieve World Peace. Let’s try to break it down. Hold tight, it’s complicated.
Breakdown of the Conflict: Arabs and Jews, despite historic tensions, lived alongside each other relatively peacefully in the area of the Middle East known as Palestine in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries, first under the rule of the Ottoman Empire then – after World War 1 – under the British Mandate. After World War 1, however, nationalism was on the rise and both Jews and Arabs began increasingly positioning themselves to secure a sovereign state for their own people in the region.
In 1920, following the arrival in Palestine of hard-line Arab nationalists from the recently-dissolved Arab Kingdom of Syria, relations began to sour and Arabs clearly saw the regional presence of Jews and Jewish nationalism (also known as Zionism) as clear competition to their own ambitions for an Arab state. Tensions mounted and in 1929 the Arab leadership led a series of anti-Jewish pogroms (ethnically-motivated riots) resulting in heavy casualties and the evacuation of Jews from the Gaza area. The British stepped in to quell these Palestinian gangs and expelled much of the nationalist leadership, but a proposed ethnic partitioning of the land was rejected by Jews and Arabs alike.
Tensions thawed somewhat during World War 2. Indeed, a joint Jewish/Arab Palestinian regiment under British command actually fought together against the Germans in North Africa. After World War 2, however, many displaced Holocaust survivors from Europe wanted to return back to the ‘safety’ of their ancient Jewish homeland and began pouring back into the region. The British had already stated an intention to withdraw and a two-state Jewish/ Arab solution was approved by the new United Nations organisation in 1947.
Before this ruling could take effect, however, the 1948 Arab-Israeli War began: Arab insurgents (some factions now claiming to be fighting an Islamic Holy War) attacked the Jews, Jewish militias fought back and chaos erupted. Jewish forces had taken the upper hand in the conflict by early 1948, pushing Arabs out of traditionally-held territories and creating large numbers of displaced Arab refugees. On 14 May 1948, the Jews declared that the Jewish state of Israel had been established. The Arab League countries offered up troops in support of displaced Palestinian Arabs and fighting resumed.
A cease-fire was called in 1949 after around 15,000 casualties, with Israel now holding most of the former territory of Palestine (including the city of Jerusalem), while Jordan occupied the West Bank and Egypt held the Gaza Strip. The Arab League declared the establishment of the All-Palestine Government in Gaza (under the protection of Egypt) on 14 September 1948 and an uneasy stalemate with Israel was reached which lasted almost ten years, though frequent skirmishes did continue.
Egypt, however, dropped its support for the All-Palestine Government in 1959 in favour of the larger (but ultimately short-lived) United Arab Republic merger with Syria, a major blow for achieving a recognised Palestinian state. The freedom fighter Yasser Arafat founded both the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) and Fatah political parties in Gaza around this time. Sensing a chance to consolidate their grip on the region, however, Israel took control of both the West Bank from Jordan and the Gaza Strip from Egypt during the 1967 Six Day War, causing the PLO Arab leadership to retreat first into Jordan then into Lebanon, from where they fought skirmishes with Israel throughout the 1970s, then finally retreated to Tunisia after the 1982 Lebanon War. With the PLO leadership now at such a distance, many Palestinian fighters became part of the Hezbollah militant group in Lebanon instead and continued to attack the Israeli border from there. Egypt eventually recognised Israel’s right to exist in 1982 (the first Arab state to do so) and the two signed a peace treaty, paving the way for a renewed international effort to resolve the ongoing conflict.
These international efforts to achieve peace built towards the 1993 Oslo Accords between Yasser Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin where the PLO very significantly recognised the state of Israel and its right to exist in peace and, in return, Israel agreed to the PLO leadership’s return from Tunisia to control the Palestinian territories (West Bank and Gaza Strip) as the newly-established Palestinian National Authority. While the two men won the Nobel Peace Prize for this deal, the perceived compromise was bitterly opposed by radical Islamic elements (including the emerging Hamas group). Israeli Prime Minister Rabin was assassinated in 1995 and the resulting escalation of violence on both sides saw thousands of new deaths. Various follow-up peace proposals have all in the end failed. Hamas continued to stir up local unrest and, following Arafat’s death in 2004, took power in the Palestinian elections of 2006. Fatah (the more moderate party of the Palestinian National Authority) disputed the Hamas win and retained control over the West Bank but, after the 2007 Battle of Gaza, Hamas defeated Fatah and kept control of the Gaza Strip. The Palestinian people now in effect have divided leadership and the current situation in the region between the three parties (Israel, Fatah-controlled West Bank and Hamas-controlled Gaza) is one – as at 2014 – of ongoing tension and unease.
Reasons for the Conflict: Where to start? Why is there so much ill-feeling between Jews and Arabs in the region and why has it lasted so long? Religion is the short answer. Mutual mistrust and a questionable commitment from either side to a genuine two-state solution is the longer one. At heart, both sides believe that the area is rightfully theirs and theirs alone, but there are numerous underlying factors at play too. For example, a key reason for Jewish mistrust is that many Israelis believe anti-Semitism (racial/religious dislike or hatred of Jews) is embedded not only within Arab nationalism but within the religion of Islam itself. The Hamas Charter indeed not only calls for the dissolution of Israel but quotes a well-known hadith (sayings of the Prophet Muhammad): “The day of judgment will not come about until Muslims fight the Jews.” Inflammatory and hateful language used ‘on the ground’ against Jews has undoubtedly contributed to religiously motivated bombings against civilian buses, restaurants, shopping malls, hotels and markets.
On the other side of the debate, a key reason for Palestinian mistrust is that they see the Israelis as invaders of their land, ever-expanding into already occupied territories. The U.N. has agreed with this view, referring to Israeli settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip as “illegal under international law”. A further point of contention is the status of the 700,000 Palestinian refugees who were displaced during the 1948 war. Descendants of these refugees today number around 4.7 million; many still live in refugee camps in the West Bank, Gaza Strip, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria. The PLO for years insisted on a ‘right of return’ for all refugees. Israelis argue there would be no refugees in the first place if Arabs had not defied the original U.N. resolution for a two-state solution. It’s a fair point for them to make, although equally fair for Palestinians to feel rightly aggrieved at the Israeli Law of Return – which grants Israeli citizenship to any Jew from anywhere in the world – but not to the Palestinians who lived there in the first place. And that’s the key problem here – both sides have very valid grievances.
And then of course there is Jerusalem, the most religiously contentious city on Earth. Both sides claim the city to be rightfully theirs for religious reasons. Both sides have occupied the city at various stages throughout its long history, and both have hugely significant monuments and places of worship there. Every peace plan yet proposed has stumbled over control of Jerusalem.
To learn more about the religion of Islam, jump to Chapter 23: Islam
To learn more about the city of Jerusalem, jump to Chapter 24: Jerusalem
To learn more about the religion of Judaism, jump to Chapter 25: Judaism
