A deeper look at the Israel–Palestine conflict

While one could go back hundreds of years to understand the origin of the Israel- Palestine conflict, starting from the year 1918 provides the crux of reason for this conflict.

Before first world war, the region around Jerusalem, under the Ottoman empire, was made up of a Jewish minority and an Arab majority. In the aftermath of WW1, the Ottoman empire was dissolved, and the British were given responsibility of creating a national home for Jews in Palestine by the League of Nations. Britain committed itself to this task under the Balfour Declaration.

The decades following WW1 saw a large influx of Jews into British Palestine. These Jews were part of a political movement called ‘Zionism’. Zionists wanted their own state, citing rising antisemitic persecution in Europe and influenced by a growing belief in secular nationalism, as well as traditional religious teachings. This large influx of Jews caused communal tensions which often resulted in breakout of violence between the Arabs and the Jews, both of whom believed the land to be theirs.

By the 1930s, the British began limiting Jewish immigration. In response, Jewish militias formed to fight both the local Arabs and to resist 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 United Nations approved a plan to divide British Palestine into two separate states: one for Jews, Israel, and one for Arabs, Palestine. The city of Jerusalem, where Jews, Muslims, and Christians all have holy sites, it was to become a special international zone.

This solution was intended to give Jews a state, establish Palestinian independence, and end the sectarian violence that the war weakened British could no longer control.

While the Jews accepted the plan, the Arabs didn’t. Palestinians saw it as an illegitimate attempt by Europeans to push them off their own land. Many recently independent Arab states, declared war on Israel in an effort to establish a unified Arab Palestine.

The newly formed Israel won the war, pushing well past their borders under the UN plan, taking the western half of Jerusalem and much of Palestine. They also expelled huge numbers of Palestinians from their homes, creating a massive refugee population whose descendants today number about 7 million. Following the war, a peace agreement was never signed and both Israel and Palestine continue to blame the other for the conflict.

In 1967, Israel and the neighbouring Arab states fought another war, ending in a decisive Israeli victory. Israel had seized the West Bank from Jordan, the Golan Heights from Syria, and both Gaza and the Sinai Peninsula from Egypt. Israel was now occupying the Palestinian territories, including all of Jerusalem and its holy sites.

In 1978 Israel and Egypt signed the US-brokered Camp David Accords and shortly after that, Israel returned Sinai to Egypt as part of a peace treaty. Over the next few decades, the other Arab states gradually made formal or informal agreements of peace with Israel.

The Israeli military’s continued occupation of Palestinian territories of West Bank and Gaza, turned the conflict into an Israeli-Palestinian struggle. The Palestinian Liberation Organization, which had formed in the 1960s to seek a Palestinian state, fought against Israel, including through acts of terrorism. The PLO initially laid claim to all of what had been British Palestine, essentially demanding an end to the Israeli state.

By the late 1980s, Palestinian frustration exploded into the Intifada, starting with protests and boycotts that soon became violent, forcing Israel to respond with heavy force. Around the same time, a group of Palestinians in Gaza, who consider the PLO too secular and too compromise-minded, created Hamas, a terrorist group dedicated to Israel’s destruction.

By the early 1990s, as the need for peace between the parties became increasingly clear, leaders from both sides signed the Oslo Accords, establishing Palestinian Authority and allowing Palestinians limited freedom to govern themselves in certain areas. However, extremists from both sides hindered its progress into the 2000s.

The absence progress in peace negotiations exhausted the Palestinian’s patience. Palestinians came to believe that peace isn’t coming, and rose up in a Second Intifada, this one much more violent than the first, following which, Israeli enthusiasm for a peaceful resolution died out too.

This stalemate continues till today, where Israeli settlers are driving out Palestinians in the West Bank, who often respond with protests and sometimes with violence. In Gaza, Hamas and other terrorist groups conduct terror attacks on Israeli civilians. Though major conflicts overwhelmingly kill Palestinians, increasing knife and petrol bomb attacks on Israeli civilians by Palestinian separatists result in similar death figures . In Israel itself, most people have become cynical and apathetic to the situation, and for the most part the occupation keeps the conflict relatively removed from their daily lives, with moments of brief but horrible violence.

There’s little political will for peace. As Israeli politics shift right under Netanyahu, the country has builds walls and checkpoints to control Palestinians’ movements. It is becoming increasingly clear that Israel is not looking for a solution to this conflict, attempting to just manage it for the time being.