CONFLICT BETWEEN ISRAEL AND PALESTINE

Where is the conflict?

when the conflict began?
What are the two bands?
When Palestinians became refugees?



The Israeli Palestinian conflict pits Jews against Arabs. Both Israel and Palestine
are ancient, neighboring territories of the Middle East. The Bible refers to Israel
many times as The promised Land a region God Plagued to the Jews. Both
Arabs and Jews trace their linage back to Abraham, a prophet of the Bibles Old
Testament, who lived in ancient Israel. For this reason both sides claim this small
area of land as their own. Jews lived in the area now Known as Israel in large
numbers until 70 A.D, when Roman conquerors destroyed the Jewish temple in
Jerusalem and drove out the Jews, resulting in a massive exodus Known as the
Diaspora. From there, Jews emigrated to different parts of the world. However,
some Jews remained, at times resisting both Muslim and Christian conquerors.
Arabs, too, spread outward from the Middle East after the Islamic religion was
founded in A.D 622. Arabs live all over the world but are concentrated in Middle
Eastern and North African countries. They are an ethnic group, and not all ethnic
Arabs are Muslim, some are Christians, and tiny minorities are even Jews. For
centuries Jews and Arabs specifically Palestinians have been the victims of
oppression. In the middle Ages, Europeans viewed Jews as an inferior people and
often pushed them into separate living areas called ghettos. This treatment
continued for centuries and escalated dramatically in the 20th century during World
War II. After most Jews left the Middle East during the Diaspora, Palestine The
land the Jews called home in ancient times was comprised of a largely Arabic
population These Arabs lived under various rulers during times when vast empires
spanned the Eastern Hemisphere. From 1516 to 1918, the Ottoman Empire
centered in present day Turkey occupied Palestine and ruled its people. Shortly
before World War I began in 1914, a wave of nationalism spread among
Palestinians, who began to clamor for an independent state.

The conflict between Palestinian Arabs and Zionist (now Israeli) Jews is a modern
phenomenon, dating to the end of the nineteenth century. Although the two groups
have different religions (Palestinians include Muslims, Christians and Druze),
religious differences are not the cause of the strife. The conflict began as a
struggle over land. From the end of World War I until 1948, the area that both
groups claimed was known internationally as Palestine. That same name was also
used to designate a less well-defined Holy Land by the three monotheistic
religions. Following the war of 19481949, this land was divided into three parts:
the State of Israel, the West Bank (of the Jordan River) and the Gaza Strip.

Until the beginning of the twentieth century, most Jews living in Palestine were
concentrated in four cities with religious significance: Jerusalem, Hebron, Safed
and Tiberias. Most of them observed traditional, orthodox religious practices. Many
spent their time studying religious texts and depended on the charity of world
Jewry for survival. Their attachment to the land was religious rather than national,
and they were not involved inor supportive ofthe Zionist movement that began
in Europe and was brought to Palestine by immigrants. Most of the Jews who
emigrated from Europe lived a more secular lifestyle and were committed to the
goals of creating a modern Jewish nation and building an independent Jewish
state. By the outbreak of World War I (1914), the population of Jews in Palestine
had risen to about 60,000, about 36,000 of whom were recent settlers. The Arab
population in 1914 was 683,000.

By the early years of the twentieth century, Palestine had become a trouble spot of
competing territorial claims and political interests. The Ottoman Empire was
weakening, and European powers were strengthening their grip on areas along the
eastern Mediterranean, including Palestine. During 19151916, as World War I
was underway, the British high commissioner in Egypt, Sir Henry McMahon,
secretly corresponded with Husayn ibn Ali, the patriarch of the Hashemite family
and Ottoman governor of Mecca and Medina. McMahon convinced Husayn to lead
an Arab revolt against the Ottoman Empire, which was aligned with Germany
against Britain and France in the war. McMahon promised that if the Arabs
supported Britain in the war, the British government would support the
establishment of an independent Arab state under Hashemite rule in the Arab
provinces of the Ottoman Empire, including Palestine.
After the war, Britain and France convinced the new League of Nations (precursor
to the United Nations), in which they were the dominant powers, to grant them
quasi-colonial authority over former Ottoman territories.
In 1921, the British divided this latter region in two: East of the Jordan River
became the Emirate of Transjordan, to be ruled by Faysals brother Abdallah, and
west of the Jordan River became the Palestine Mandate. It was the first time in
modern history that Palestine became a unified political entity.
Throughout the region, Arabs were angered by Britain's failure to fulfill its promise
to create an independent Arab state, and many opposed British and French control
as a violation of Arabs' right to self-determination. n Palestine, the situation was
more complicated because of the British promise to support the creation of a
Jewish national home. Palestinian Arabs opposed the British Mandate because it
thwarted their aspirations for self-rule, and they opposed massive Jewish
immigration because it threatened their position in the country.
In 1928, Muslims and Jews in Jerusalem began to clash over their respective
communal religious rights at the Western (or Wailing) Wall. The Wall, the sole
remnant of the second Jewish Temple, is the holiest site in the Jewish religious
tradition. Above the Wall is a large plaza known as the Temple Mount, the location
of the two ancient Israelite temples (though no archaeological evidence has been
found for the First Temple). The place is also sacred to Muslims, who call it the
Noble Sanctuary. It now hosts the al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock,
believed to mark the spot from which the Prophet Muhammad ascended to heaven
on a winged horse, al-Buraq, that he tethered to the Western Wall, which bears the
horses name in the Muslim tradition.
European Jewish immigration to Palestine increased dramatically after Hitlers rise
to power in Germany in 1933, leading to new land purchases and Jewish
settlements. Palestinian resistance to British control and Zionist settlement
climaxed with the Arab revolt of 19361939, which Britain suppressed with the help
of Zionist militias and the complicity of neighboring Arab regimes. After crushing
the Arab revolt, the British reconsidered their governing policies in an effort to
maintain order in an increasingly tense environment. They issued the 1939 White
Paper (a statement of government policy) limiting future Jewish immigration and
land purchases and promising independence in ten years, which would have
resulted in a majority-Arab Palestinian state. The Zionists regarded the White
Paper as a betrayal of the Balfour Declaration and a particularly egregious act in
light of the desperate situation of the Jews in Europe, who were facing
extermination. The 1939 White Paper marked the end of the British-Zionist
alliance. At the same time, the defeat of the Arab revolt and the exile of the
Palestinian political leadership meant that the Palestinians were politically
disorganized during the crucial decade in which the future of Palestine was
decided.
Following World War II, hostilities escalated between Arabs and Jews over the fate
of Palestine and between the Zionist militias and the British army. Britain decided
to relinquish its mandate over Palestine and requested that the recently
established United Nations determine the future of the country. But the British
governments hope was that the UN would be unable to arrive at a workable
solution, and would turn Palestine back to them as a UN trusteeship. A UN-
appointed committee of representatives from various countries went to Palestine to
investigate the situation. Although members of this committee disagreed on the
form that a political resolution should take, the majority concluded that the country
should be divided (partitioned) in order to satisfy the needs and demands of both
Jews and Palestinian Arabs. At the end of 1946, 1,269,000 Arabs and 608,000
Jews resided within the borders of Mandate Palestine. Jews had acquired by
purchase about 7 percent of the total land area of Palestine, amounting to about 20
percent of the arable land.
On November 29, 1947, the UN General Assembly voted to partition Palestine into
two states, one Jewish and the other Arab. The UN partition plan divided the
country so that each state would have a majority of its own population, although a
few Jewish settlements would fall within the proposed Arab state while hundreds of
thousands of Palestinian Arabs would become part of the proposed Jewish state.
The territory designated for the Jewish state would be slightly larger than the Arab
state (56 percent and 43 percent of Palestine, respectively, excluding Jerusalem),
on the assumption that increasing numbers of Jews would immigrate there.
According to the UN partition plan, the area of Jerusalem and Bethlehem was to
become an international zone.
Fighting began between the Arab and Jewish residents of Palestine days after the
adoption of the UN partition plan. The Arab military forces were poorly organized,
trained and armed.
On May 15, 1948, the British evacuated Palestine, and Zionist leaders proclaimed
the State of Israel. Neighboring Arab states (Egypt, Syria, Jordan and Iraq) then
invaded Israel, claiming that they sought to save Palestine from the Zionists.
Lebanon declared war but did not invade. In fact, the Arab rulers had territorial
designs on Palestine and were no more anxious than the Zionists to see a
Palestinian state emerge. During May and June 1948, when the fighting was most
intense, the outcome of this first Arab-Israeli war was in doubt. But after arms
shipments from Czechoslovakia reached Israel, its armed forces established
superiority and conquered additional territories beyond the borders the UN partition
plan had drawn up for the Jewish state.
In 1949, the war between Israel and the Arab states ended with the signing of
armistice agreements. The country once known as Palestine was now divided into
three parts. The State of Israel encompassed over 77 percent of the territory.
Jordan occupied East Jerusalem and the hill country of central Palestine (the West
Bank). Egypt took control of the coastal plain around the city of Gaza (the Gaza
Strip).
As a consequence of the fighting in Palestine/Israel between 1947 and 1949, over
700,000 Palestinians became refugees. The precise number of refugees is sharply
disputed, as is the question of responsibility for their exodus. Many Palestinians
have claimed that most were expelled in accordance with a Zionist plan to rid the
country of its non-Jewish inhabitants.

References
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