The Israel-Palestine Conflict Essay, Research Paper

The years since WWII have held many, many important events that have shaped the course of human history. Technology has advanced us to the point of near-instantaneous communication, and great enlightenment. Great leaders and exemplary societal figures have come and gone, leaving behind them legacies for all to remember. A great global war has been waged without either sides greatest powers ever firing upon one another, for fear that all of humanity should perish. Tremendous concern for the well-being of the very planet which enables life the only life in the universe as far as we know has arisen and loomed behind every decision made since. An international governing body has successfully been created to settle international disputes effecting the interdependent nations humanity has developed. Through this body, the United Nations (UN), the modern country of Israel was officially established in 1948. It was to be the home of a people scattered globally thousands of years ago, chased from their homelands to be persecuted by the European and Arabian cultures they most closely fit in with.These people, the Jews, the followers of Judaism and seekers of the Messiah promised by their God, were rounded up and exiled from Spain, all but exterminated by the Nazis of Germany, and envied by many others. Descended from the original outcasts of Biblical record as a people have gone through millennia of hardship, suffering, and testing of faith to finally rest in the land they called home after escaping Egyptian slavery. Unfortunately for them, the journey is not yet at an end, for as Homer s Odysseus found upon returning home, their home was not just empty in their absence. Ever since their return to Israel, they have been at odds with the newer inhabitants of their homelands, those who would call it Palestine.

History:

Palestine is historic region, the extent of which has varied greatly since ancient times, situated on the east coast of the Mediterranean Sea, in southwest Asia, and now largely part of the states of Israel and Jordan. The Israelites, a confederation of Hebrew tribes, drove off the already settled Canaanites and Philistines about 1125 BC, and made it their own. Around 586 BC, the Babylonians captured Palestine and exiled the Jews there. The Jews recovered some of the land, but were again kicked out during the Diaspora, or scattering of the Jews globally.

Eventually, after about two millennia of changing hands, Palestine fell under control of the Ottoman Turks, and remained so until 1917-18, when the British took it in WWI. The Arabs revolted against the Turks because the British had promised them the independence of their countries after the war. Britain, however, also promised to divide and rule the region with its allies. In a third agreement, the Balfour Declaration of 1917, Britain promised the Jews, whose help it needed in the war effort, a Jewish “national home” in Palestine. Britain found its contradictory promises to the Jewish and Palestinian communities difficult to reconcile. Disputes between all the factions promised Palestine by Britain escalated for years, especially among Jews and Palestinians, only to abate during WWII.

The struggle over control of Palestine quickly resumed in 1945. The horrors of the Holocaust produced world sympathy for European Jews and for Zionism, the movement to reinstate a Jewish nation in Palestine. Britain gave up its failing attempts to mediate in April 1947 and turned the problem over to the UN. Although the Palestinians outnumbered the Jews (1,300,000 to 600,000), the latter were better prepared for the impending showdown. They had a semiautonomous government, led by David Ben-Gurion, and their military was well trained and experienced. The Palestinians, on the other hand, hadn t recovered from the Arab revolt, and most of their leaders were in exile. The Mufti of Jerusalem, their main spokesman, wouldn t accept Jewish statehood. When the UN proposed partition in November 1947, he rejected the plan while the Jews accepted it. In the military struggle that followed, the Palestinians were badly beaten.

The state of Israel was officially established on May 14, 1948. Five Arab armies, coming to the aid of the Palestinians, immediately attacked it. Uncoordinated and outnumbered, they were defeated by Israeli forces, shortly followed by an enlargement of Israeli territory. Jordan took the West Bank of the Jordan River, and Egypt took the Gaza Strip (Israel occupied these lands after the Six Day War of 1967.), producing about 780,000 Palestinian refugees. About half probably left out of fear and panic, while the rest were forced out to make room for Jewish immigrants from Europe and from the Arab world. The disinherited Palestinians spread throughout the neighboring countries, where they have maintained their Palestinian national identity and the desire to return to their homeland.

The occupied territories became a major political issue in Israel after 1967. The right and leaders of the country’s orthodox religious parties opposed withdrawal from the West Bank and Gaza, which they considered part of Israel. The 1967 war was followed by an upsurge of Palestinian Arab nationalism. Several guerrilla organizations within the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) carried out terrorist attacks on Israeli schools, marketplaces, bus stations, and airports, with the stated objective of “redeeming Palestine.” Terrorist attacks on Israelis at home and abroad unified public opinion against recognition of and negotiation with the PLO, but the group nevertheless succeeded in gaining widespread international support, including UN recognition as the “sole legitimate representative of the Palestinians.”

In 1973 Egypt joined Syria in a war on Israel to regain the territories lost in 1967. The two Arab states struck unexpectedly on October 6, which fell on Yom Kippur, Israel’s holiest fast day. Israeli forces managed to contain the attackers after a three-week struggle, but at the cost of many casualties, and the Arabs’ strong showing won them support from the USSR and most of the Third World. Saudi Arabia and Kuwait financed the Arab forces, making it possible for Egypt and Syria to receive the most sophisticated Soviet weapons, and the Arab oil-producing states cut off petroleum exports to the U.S. and other Western nations in retaliation for their aid to Israel.

Israel, forced to compete with the nearly unlimited Arab resources, was faced with a serious financial setback. Only massive U.S. economic and military assistance enabled it to redress the balance, but even American aid was unable to prevent a downward spiral of the economy. In an effort to encourage a peace settlement, U.S. President Richard M. Nixon charged his secretary of state, Henry Kissinger, with the task of negotiating agreements between Israel and Egypt and Syria. Kissinger managed to work out military disengagements between Israel and Egypt in the Sinai and between Israel and Syria in the Golan Heights during 1974.

This was followed by an Israeli peace agreement with Egypt in 1979, and despite complications, Israel completed a withdrawal from the Sinai in April 1982. Two months later Israel launched an invasion of Lebanon aimed at wiping out the PLO presence there. By mid-August, after intensive fighting in and around Beirut, the PLO agreed to withdraw from the city. Israeli troops remained in southern Lebanon, however, and the cost of the occupation drained the already troubled Israeli economy.

Relations between Israel and the Palestinians entered a new phase in the late 1980s with the intifada, a series of uprisings in the occupied territories that included demonstrations, strikes, and rock-throwing attacks on Israeli soldiers and civilians. The harsh response by the Israeli government drew criticism from both the U.S. and the UN. During 1989 and ‘90 more than 200,000 Soviet Jews settled in Israel. This wave of immigration encouraged by the Israeli government but resented by many Palestinians and Israeli Arabs severely strained the nation’s economy. During the Persian Gulf War, in which many Palestinians openly favored Iraq, Scud missiles repeatedly struck Israel, wounding more than 200 people and damaging nearly 9000 homes in the Tel Aviv area. Contrary to its usual policy, Israel did not retaliate, in part because the U.S. sent antimissile missiles to aid in Israel’s defense.

The first comprehensive peace talks between Israel and delegations representing the Palestinians and neighboring Arab states began in October 1991. After Likud lost the Knesset elections of June 1992, Labor party leader Yitzhak Rabin formed a new government. Rabin imposed strict limits on new Jewish settlements in the occupied territories and initially took a more conciliatory line toward the Palestinians. In December, however, after an upsurge in attacks on Israeli soldiers, Israel deported more than 400 Palestinians to southern Lebanon.

Events in the Middle East took a surprising turn in 1993. After secret negotiations, Prime Minister Rabin and PLO Chairman Yasir Arafat flew to Washington, D.C., and on September 13 signed a historic peace agreement. The Israelis and the PLO agreed to recognize each other, and Israel agreed to begin a phased withdrawal of troops from Gaza and parts of the West Bank, in preparation for Palestinian administration of those areas. Since then, peace talks between Israel and Palestine have increased, strongly cultivated by the U.S. and UN.

Discussion:

The conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians is the product of several disputes amidst the groups. These include the issue of ancestral claim, the belief that since their forefathers lived there, they have a claim to the land. Another issue is the control over religious areas & structures, most of which are claimed by both sides as holy and sullied by being in possession of the other faction. One more important issue is the current land titles, which are the legal ownerships of the land and mingle Palestinian and Jewish people. Although it has been ongoing since the Hebrews came out of Egypt to defeat the Canaanites and Philistines, this quarrel has only risen once again to the level of physical violence in the past 50 years or so. Both factions have since had terrorist groups arise to work for their respective causes, and their militaries have been used to fight these insurgents. One thing is certain, however, unless both Israeli and Palestinian people all change their minds on the aforementioned issues, the conflict between them will not end.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict won t be done until the issue of rights to ownership by ancestry are settled. The resolution of this dispute is not a matter of whether or not this issue will be settled, because it definitely will be. The problem, rather, is how to settle it peaceably. Both sides have feasible claims, dating back thousands of years. The Palestinians were living there since the Jews were scattered during the Diaspora (p.1) up to the present. The Jews claim an earlier ancestry dating back to before that time to when they came from Egypt (p.1) and its slavery. In yet another claim, the oldest ancestors of the Palestinians were extradited by these Hebrew immigrants, so they have the oldest claim. Unfortunately, just history isn t enough to give the lands of Israel to the Palestinians.

An ending to the conflict over Israel lies through the settlement of issues over the control of lands and structures deemed holy by both sides. The major conflict here is over the ownership of the holy city of Jerusalem, originally part of the international territory declared by the UN during the creation of Israel. There are many temples and hallowed grounds that have attained divine importance for both Israelites and Palestinians, and unfortunately cannot be shared. The constraints of the two religions disallow any possible dual ownership of the disputed consecrations, so they ve remained unowned for many years now. Seeing holy places defiled by the rituals of believers in a different faith holds an immense repulsion to members of both Judaic and Islamic faiths. Neither group will settle for just some of the desired possessions either, making it all but impossible to find a fair compromise. Both sides want all the locations for themselves, and only for themselves, but this is impossible to accomplish. So, since there is currently no applicable solution to this relic-proprietorship dilemma, it will most likely not be the factor to resolve the conflict.

The last major argument keeping the Israelis and Palestinians apart is that of the current land ownerships, and their effect on political decisions for a solution. Lately, Palestinian leaders have been trying to establish an independent state of Palestine by declaring secession from Israel. Unfortunately, the lands to be controlled by the Palestinian secession are home to numerous Jews who don t want to leave their current holdings behind. The problem with this is that the Palestinian leader, Yasir Arafat, doesn t have complete control over the Palestinians, so if Palestine were to break away from the rest of Israel, the safety of the Israelis living in the ceded lands couldn t be guaranteed. For this reason, the UN is attempting to stall the decision, if not change the Palestinians minds on the matter altogether. Recently, pressure upon Arafat moved back the Palestinian declaration of independence from 9/13/00 to 11/15/00. If this issue is resolved properly, the others may be soon to follow, ending over fifty years of controversy, and sending the ancient dispute into a remission at the least.

Measures to solve problems between the Palestinians and Israelis will have to be aimed at the aforementioned issues of ancestry, theological symbols, and current land ownership. Although there are several more issues at hand, these are the most prevalent, catalytic, and impossible ones. A breakthrough in any of these areas will bring all of the years of work together for diplomats working on the matter. This conflict has risen out of two groups insatiable demands, and will end or subside in the near future with far less than all parties satisfied with the outcome. As with the Hawaiian issue right here in our home state, there is not yet any settlement which can appease the parties involved and be reasonably workable. Until one side bends a little or a revolutionary solution comes along, this is a problem which will remain unresolved.