Isarel Palestine Conflict.docx

Israeli-Palestine Conflict Israeli-Palestine Conflict is the ongoing struggle between Israelis and Palestinians that began in the mid-20th century. One of the biggest myths about the Israeli-Palestine conflict is that it has been going on for centuries, all about ancient religious hatreds. In fact, while the religion is involved, the conflict is mostly about two groups of people who claim the same land. And it only goes back to the early 1900s. Around the, the region along the eastern Mediterranean we now call Israel-Palestine had been under Ottoman rule for centuries. It was religiously diverse, including mostly Muslims and Christian but also a small number of Jews, who lived generally in peace. And it was changing in two important ways. First, more people in the religion were developing a sense of being not just ethnic Arabs, but Palestinians, a distinct national identity. At the same time, more Jews were joining a movement called Zionism not so far in the northern Europe, which said that Judaism was just not a religion but a nationality, one that deserve a nation. And after centuries of persecution, many believed a Jewish state was their only way of safety, and they saw their historic homeland in the Middle East as their best hope for establishing it. In the first decades of the 20th century, 10000s of European Jews moved there. After WWI, the Ottoman Empire collapsed, the British and French Empire carved up the Middle East, with the British taking control of a religion called the British Mandate for Palestine. At first, British allowed Jewish immigration, but as more Jews arrived, settling into farming communities, tension between Jews and Arabs grew. Both sides committed acts of violence, and in 1930s, the British began limiting Jewish immigration. In response, Jewish militias formed to fight both the local Arabs and resist the British rule. Then came the Holocaust, leading many more Jews to flee Europe for British Palestine and galvanizing much of the world in support of a Jewish state. In 1947, as sectarian violence between Arabs and Jews there grew, the UN approved a plan to divide British Palestine into two separate states: One for Jews (Israel) and one for Arabs (Palestine). City of Jerusalem, where Jews, Muslims and Christians all have holy sites, it was to become a special international zone. The plan was meant to give Jews a state, to establish Palestinian independence and to end the sectarian that British could no longer control. The Jews accepted the plan and declared independence as Israel. But Arabs throughout the religion saw the UN plan as just more European colonialism trying to steal their land. Many of the Arab states, who had just recently won independence themselves, declared war on Israel to establish a

unified Arab Palestine where all British Palestine had been. The new Israel state won the war, but in the process, they pushed well past their borders under the UN plan, taking the western half of Jerusalem and mush of the land that was to have been part of Palestine. They also expelled massive numbers of Palestinians from their homes, creating a huge refugee population whose descendant today number about 7 million. At the end of the war, Israel control most of territory except for Gaza, which Egypt controlled, and the West Bank, named because it’s west of Jordan River, which Jordan controlled. This was the beginning of the decades-long Arab-Israel conflict. Then something happened that transformed the conflict. In 1967 and the neighbouring Arab states fought another war. When it ended, Israel had seized the Golan Heights from Syria and West Bank from Jordan and both Gaza and 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 Palestinian-a people it had fought for decades. In 1978, Israel and Egypt signed the USbrokered Camp David Accords and shortly after that, Israel gave Sanai back to Egypt as a part of 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 Arab-Israel conflict and many Arab states made peace with Israel. But Israel’s military was still occupying the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and Gaza, and this was when the conflict became an Israel-Palestinian struggle. The Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), 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 the British Palestinian, meaning it wanted to end the state of Israel entirely. Fighting between Israel and the PLO went on for years, even including a 1982 Israel invasion of Lebanon to kick the group out of Beirut. Then the Israel settler arrive, followed by soldier to guard them, and the growing settlements force Palestinians off their land and divide communities. Short-term, they make the occupation much more painful for the Palestinians. Long term, by dividing up Palestinian land, they make it more difficult for the Palestinian to ever have an independent state. By the late 1980s, Palestinian frustration exploded into the Intifada, which translated from the Arabic word for uprising. It began with mostly protests and boycotts but soon became violent, and Israel responded with heavy force. Couple of hundred Israelis and over a thousand Palestinian died in the first Intifada. Around the same time, a group a Palestinians in Gaza, who considered the PLO

too secular, too compromise-minded, created Hamas, a violent extremist group dedicated to Israel’s destruction. By the 1990s, it’s clear that Israelis and Palestinians must make peace, and leaders from both sides sigh the Oslo Accords. This is meant to be a big, first step toward Israel maybe someday withdrawing from the Palestinians territories, and allowing an independent Palestine. Hard-liners from both sides opposed the Oslo Accords. Member of Hamas launch suicide bombings to try sabotage the process. Not long after Rabin signs the second round of Oslo Accords, a far-sight Israeli shoots him to death in Tel Aviv. This violence showed how extremists on both sides can use violence to derail peace, and keep the permanent conflict going as they seek the other side’s destruction. Negotiation meant to hammer out the final details on peace drag on for years, and a big Camp David Summit in 2000 comes up empty. Palestinians come to believe that peace isn’t coming, and rise in a Second Intifada, this one much more violent than the first. About 1000 Israelis and 3200 Palestinians had died. The second Intifada really changes the conflict. Israelis become much more sceptical that Palestinians will ever accept peace, or that it’s even worth trying. Israeli politics shift right, and the country builds wall and checkpoints to control Palestinians’ movements. They’re not really trying to solve the conflict anymore, just manage it. And the conflict still going on today, 100 years after. The pro-Palestinian argument is that Israelis are European Jews who trumped up the idea of an Israeli identity to steal land, but who belong in Europe and need to go back. The pro-Israeli argument is that Palestinians are just Arabs who trumped up the idea of a Palestinian identity to claim land they weren't fully using, but who should instead be absorbed into the neighbouring Arab states of Jordan and Egypt. Obviously, there is a real degree of racism in both arguments, but both are ignored by actual experiences of Israelis and Palestinians. Both sides argue that they have claims to the land going back in centuries. However, the argument of whose roots goes back earlier elides that this conversation is more about modern national identities than ancient religious roots. This war is one of the most confusing modern conflict. Therefore, the number of stakeholders is hard to manage. The most notable ones are JEWS, OTTOMAN EMPIRE, ISRAELIS, PALESTINIANS, LEAGUE OF ARAB, BRITISH EMPIRE, FRENCH EMPIRE, JORDAN, EGYPT.

One of the Islamists' successes is that these days, hardly a single Israeli news portal can avoid showing their propaganda videos. The same can be said of Israeli state television. The fierce competition on the Israeli media market is not the only reason for this. The increasing potency of the Palestinian propaganda material is because it is broadcast in three languages: Arabic, English and Hebrew. The newspaper has transcribed an excerpt for its readers, but only to make fun of the singing Qassim fighters' heavy Arabic accents and their mispronunciation of some words. A few of the song's lines go: “You will carry out attacks / destroy all the Zionists / seek battle with them / let their military bases and soldiers go up in flames / and their weak state, shaken to its core / we are carrying on the war. The videos from the current conflict, made available by the army, are now everywhere in the Israeli media. The public has grown used to images of attacks that have been carried out with "surgical precision" and filmed by fighter jets or drones. They don't show the so-called "collateral damage" – which in any case supposedly doesn't exist; after all, the army leaders say they warn the Palestinian population prior to every planned bombardment. Saudi Arabia is known to be seeking cooperation with Pakistan and with other countries as part of its attempted exit from the collapsing US empire. Prince Turkic al-Faisal, a leading figure of the royal family, signalled Riyadh’s broad-based rage against Washington with a June 7 op-ed warning Obama that “There will be disastrous consequences for U.S.-Saudi relations if the United States vetoes UN recognition of a Palestinian state.” Turkic concluded with a threat: “We Arabs used to say no to peace, and we got our comeuppance in 1967 [with a crushing military defeat] …. Now, it is the Israelis who are saying no. I’d hate to be around when they face their comeuppance.” These blunt words, which reflect a Saudi hostility to the Obama regime that goes beyond the Palestinian issue to include the whole range of national strategy, has caused shock behind closed doors in official Washington. After the 1967 Arab–Israeli war, the United Nations Security Council unanimously passed resolution 242 calling for Israeli withdrawal from the territories occupied during the war, in exchange for "termination of all claims or states of belligerency" and "acknowledgement of sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of every state in the area". The PLO,

which had been formed in 1964, strongly criticized the resolution, saying that it reduced the question of Palestine to a refugee problem. In September 1974, 56 Member States proposed that "the question of Palestine" be included as an item in the General Assembly’s agenda. In a resolution adopted on 22 November 1974, the General Assembly affirmed Palestinian rights, which included the "right to self-determination without external interference", "the right to national independence and sovereignty", and the "right to return to their homes and property". These rights have been affirmed every year since. By 2010, when direct talks were scheduled to be restarted, continued growth of settlements on the West Bank and continued strong support of settlements by the Israeli government had greatly reduced the land and resources that would be available to a Palestinian state creating doubt among Palestinians and left-wing Israelis that a two-state solution continued to be viable. In January 2012 the European Union Heads of Mission report on East Jerusalem found that Israel's continuing settlement activities and the fragile situation of the Palestinian population in East Jerusalem, as well in area C, was making a two-state solution less likely. The Israeli Foreign Ministry rejected this EU report, claiming it was "based on a partial, biased and one sided depiction of realities on the ground." In May 2012, the EU council stressed its "deep concern about developments on the ground which threaten to make a two-state solution impossible'.

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israel/2011/06/07/AGmnK2OH_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.f94fb35a1 a30 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-state_solution https://www.factsaboutisrael.uk/israeli-palestinian-conflict-summary/