ISRAEL-Palestine Conflict (AN APPLE OF DISCORD IN MIDDLE EAST):
Since the birth of Israel, it has seemed to be the most disturbing factor in the middle east due to
her several wars with the Arab world like war of 1948-49, war of 1967, and Yom Kipur war
1973 etc. After the World War 2 and the brutal genocide of Jews named as Holocaust, Jews got
the sympathies of the whole world and The United Nations decided to relocate Jews in their old
home i.e. in the territory of Palestine. As Israel had the assistance of the USA, it developed very
fast and the Palestinians crushed to the worst economic conditions and her sovereignty got highly
threatened. Now, Palestine is surrounded by the armed forces of Israel which cause destitutions
in almost every home in Palestine. This Arab–Israeli conflict play a key role in political tension,
military conflicts and disputes in the Middle East. The main cause of this conflict is the claim of land
by both of the parties.
Claim Of The Land:
The Arab-Israel dispute arises from the conflicting claims to the land by every “Ibrahimic
Religion” because this land is sacred for every Ibrahimic religion. Territory is claimed by
the Jewish people as it has been their ancestral homeland is at the same time claimed by
the Muslims i.e. Pan-Arab movement as historically and currently belonging to the Palestinians.
“Dome of the Rock” situated in Jerusalem is known as the common sacred place of all Ibrahimic
Religions. This dome is “Bait-ul-Maqdis” (remoted mosque) for the Muslims built in 690s by
Ummayad Dynasty (1st Muslim dynasty) but Jew people claims that this dome is built at the site
of their temple. So, it has proved as one cause of conflict between Arab and Israel.
History of Israel-Palestine Conflict (since 1900):
The roots of the modern Arab–Israeli conflict lie in the rise of Zionism and the reactionary Arab
nationalism in the end of 19th century. Before world war one, the land of Palestine was under the
control of The Ottoman Empire for nearly 400 years. After the world war 1, Palestine territory
was conquered by British forces. In the 1920s, British Government welcomed the immigration of
the Jews from different Arab areas to Palestine but as due to conflicts between Muslims and
Jews, In1930s, British put limitations on Jews immigrations. In 1940s, during the brutal genocide
of the Jews by the Nazi forces result in arrival of Jews refugees towards Arab countries including
Palestine. After the world war 2, Jews got all the sympathies and After it’s formation, United
Nations adopted a resolution on 29th Sep 1947 according to which Jews of the whole world was
to be relocated in Palestine, and British mandatory Palestine divided into states one for Arab and
the other for Jews while Jerusalem would be administered by the UN. This Resolution was
adopted by 33 votes to 13 with 10 abstentions. All six Arab states who were UN-members voted
against it. On the ground, Arab and Jewish Palestinians were fighting openly to control strategic
positions in the region. Several major atrocities were committed by both sides which lately result
in Civil war in Mandatory Palestine.
Arab-Israel War 1948-49:
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.
These armistice lines held until next war held in 1967.
1956 Israel Invasion in Gaza (Suiz Canal Crisis):
In 1956, Egypt nationalized the Suiz Canal, a vital waterway connecting Europe and Asia. In
Reaction as a preemptive strike, Israel invaded Egypt’s Sinai Penisula. In five days the Israeli
army captured Gaza, Rafaḥ, and Al-Arssh, taking thousands of prisoners and occupied most of
the peninsula east of the Suez Canal. In December, after the joint Anglo-French intervention, a
UN Emergency Force was stationed in the area, and Israeli forces withdrew in March 1957.
Though Egyptian forces had been defeated on all fronts, the Suiz canal, as it is sometimes
known, was seen by Arabs as an Egyptian victory. A UN buffer force was placed in the Sinai
Peninsula.
1967: Six-Day War:
Arab and Israeli forces clashed for the third time June 5–10, 1967, what came to be called
the Six-Day War (or June War). In early 1967 Syria intensified its bombardment of Israeli
villages from positions in the Golan Heights. When the Israeli Air Force shot down six
Syrian MIG fighter jets in reprisal, Nasser (President of Egypt) mobilized his forces near the
Sinai border and he again sought to blockade Elat. In May 1967 Egypt signed a mutual defense
pact with Jordan.
Israel answered this apparent Arab rush to war by staging a sudden air assault, destroying
Egypt’s air force on the ground. The Israeli victory on the ground was also overwhelming. Israeli
units drove back Syrian forces from the Golan Heights, took control of the Gaza Strip and
the Sinai Peninsula from Egypt, and drove Jordanian forces from the West Bank. Importantly,
the Israelis were left in sole control of Jerusalem. These six days of fighting resonate around the
Middle East till today.
1973: Yom Kippur War
The sporadic fighting that followed the Six-Day War again developed into full-scale war in
1973. On October 6, the Jewish holy day of Yom Kippur, Israel was attacked by Egypt across
the Suez Canal and by Syria on the Golan Heights. The Arab armies showed greater
aggressiveness and fighting ability than in the previous wars, and the Israeli forces suffered
heavy casualties. The Israeli army, however, reversed early losses and pushed its way into Syrian
territory and encircled the Egyptian Third Army by crossing the Suez Canal and establishing
forces on its west bank.
Israel and Egypt signed a cease-fire agreement in November and peace agreements on January
18, 1974. The accords provided for Israeli withdrawal into the Sinai, while Egypt was to reduce
the size of its forces on the east bank of the canal. A UN peacekeeping force was established
between the two armies. This agreement was supplemented by another, signed on September 4,
1975. On May 31, 1974, Israel and Syria signed a cease-fire agreement that also covered
separation of their forces by a UN buffer zone and exchange of prisoners of war.
1982: Lebanon War:
On June 5, 1982, less than six weeks after Israel’s complete withdrawal from the Sinai, increased
tensions between Israelis and Palestinians resulted in the Israeli bombing of Beirut and
southern Lebanon, where the Palestine Liberation Organization (founded in 1964; It’s stated goal
was the "liberation of Palestine" through armed struggle) had a number of strongholds. The
following day Israel invaded Lebanon, and by June 14 its land forces reached as far as the
outskirts of Beirut, which was encircled, but the Israeli government agreed to halt its advance
and begin negotiations with the PLO. After much delay and massive Israeli shelling of west
Beirut, the PLO evacuated the city under the supervision of a multinational force. Eventually,
Israeli troops withdrew from west Beirut, and the Israeli army had withdrawn entirely from
Lebanon by June 1985.
First Intifada 1987-1993:
In the reprisal of Israel’s brutalism in Palestine, first Intifada was introduced by PLO in 1987
which ended in 1993. The First Intifada or First Palestinian Intifada was a
Palestinian uprising against the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. ... Israel,
deploying some 80,000 soldiers and initially firing live rounds, killed a large number of
Palestinians.
The Israeli army's heavy handed response to the demonstrations, with live ammunition, beatings
and mass arrests, brought international condemnation. The PLO, which until then had never been
recognized as the leaders of the Palestinian people by Israel, was invited to peace negotiations
the following year, after it recognized Israel and renounced terrorism.
In mid-1993, Israeli and Palestinian representatives engaged in peace talks in Oslo, Norway. As
a result, in September 1993, Israel and the PLO signed the Oslo Accords, known as
the Declaration of Principles or Oslo I; in side letters, Israel recognized the PLO as the legitimate
representative of the Palestinian people while the PLO recognized the right of the state of Israel
to exist and renounced terrorism, violence and its desire for the destruction of Israel.
The Oslo II agreement was signed in 1995 and detailed the division of the West Bank into Areas
A, B, and C. Area A was land under full Palestinian civilian control. In Area A, Palestinians
were also responsible for internal security. The Oslo agreements remain important documents in
Israeli-Palestinian relations.
2nd Intifada 2000-2005:
The cause of 2nd intifada is not so complex and begins with deeper structural factors like the
continuing Israeli occupation during the Oslo years as like it kept on doing this since 1948.
The continuing Israeli occupation, even after the Oslo agreements, was the underlying cause of
the second intifada. The violence started in September 2000, after PM of Israel visited to
the Temple Mount, seen by Palestinians as highly provocative; and Palestinian demonstrators,
throwing stones at police, were dispersed by the Israeli army, using tear gas and rubber bullets.
Throughout 2nd Intifada, Almost 1000 Israelis and almost 4000 Palestinian were killed.
Some commentators such as Sever Plocker consider the intifada to have ended in late 2004. With
the sickness and then death of Yasser Arafat in November 2004, the Palestinians lost their
internationally recognized leader of the previous three decades, after which the intifada lost
momentum and lead to internal fighting between Palestinian factions (most notably the Fatah–
Hamas conflict; Fatah Formerly known as PLO and Hamas is a Sunni liberation party established
in 1987) as well as conflict within Fatah itself.
Second Lebanon War 2006:
After eight Israeli soldiers had been killed and two captured by the Lebanese group Hezbollah,
Israel and Hezbollah engaged in a 33-day war in which Hezbollah fired a hail of rockets into
Israel and the Israelis bombed Lebanese towns, villages and infrastructure but made little
headway in ground operations.
The war ended inconculsively but with Hezbollah largely intact. A new element had also been
introduced into Israel's wars. It accused Iran of arming Hezbollah (and Hamas). The war lasted
34 days but left more than one thousand Lebanese dead and about one million others displaced.
Israel-Palestine 2008 TO 2014:
Later on, Many other incidents have been happened between Israel and Palestine e.g. in 2008
Gaza War which results into almost 1400 deaths of Palestinians 13 of Israelis and , in 2012
Operation Pillar of Defense was an eight-day Israel Defense Forces (IDF) operation in the
Hamas-governed Gaza Strip, which began on 14 November 2012 with the killing of Ahmed
Jabari, chief of the Gaza military wing of Hamas by an Israeli airstrike. The 2014 Israel–Gaza
conflict also known as Operation Protective Edge and sometimes referred to as the 2014 Gaza
war, was a military operation launched by Israel on 8 July 2014 in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip.
In terms of the human cost, it is estimated that the conflict has taken 92,000 lives (74,000
military and 18,000 civilian from 1945 to 1995.
Intervention Of Super Powers in Middle East:
After the debacle in Egypt, and unsettled by what it considered its greatest foreign policy error
since World War II, Washington shifted more and more of its energies to fighting the Cold War
in the Third World.
In the Soviet Union Khruschev brought about changes that allowed his government to exploit
opportunities with the newly emerging nations.
For both nations the Middle East was the top priority.
From 1955 through 1968, the Soviet Union provided nearly $3 billion in military aid to the
region.
Moscow had several objectives, including a need to access warm water ports on the open sea, a
desire to limit Western access to the region’s oil resources, and a determination to eliminate
Western influence by destroying alliances, particularly the Baghdad Pact of 1955, the CENTO
Pact of 1956, and the more loosely aligned Islamic Alliance of 1966.
As a first step, the Soviets increased their appeal to Arab nationalism, portraying Israel as an
instrument of Western imperialism and the United States as a neocolonialist power.
La Feber says that Moscow also “fanned local arms races … between revolutionary and
moderate Arab, and between Algeria an d Morocco, thereby undermining American efforts.”
The United States provided roughly the same level of assistance as did the Soviets, representing
itself as a guardian of stability in the region despite the fact that it was chiefly concerned with
protecting Western interests against Soviet overtures.
Western interests were important since, at that time, the Middle East provided 80 percent of
Western Europe’s oil supply and contained more than three-fifths of the world’s proven oil
reserves, in addition to its proximity to NATO’s southern flank.
As arms flowed into the Middle East, Iran’s concern over issues relating to regional security
intensified.
In Iran, the shah’s perception of threat was also exacerbated by the magnitude of Soviet aid to
neighboring Afghanistan who, for nearly nine years (1946 – 1955), had unsuccessfully sought
American aid and support.
When the United States ultimately made clear its commitment to Pakistan and its unwillingness
to commit itself comparably to Afghanistan, the country became the first Cold War recipient of
Soviet economic credits.
By 1964 the buffer state received the highest per capita assistance of any nation under the
Kremlin’s economic umbrella. This knowledge propelled a defense build-up in Iran and
Pakistan.
