User:Mrandrewnohome/Arab Israeli Conflict

ORIGINS
The Arab-Israeli conflict has proved among the most bitter, protracted, violent and seemingly intractable of the last 60 years. Its historical origins are rooted in the early 20th century when, in the context of world war and declining empire, both the Zionist movement and the Arab population were courted by the British government in an effort to secure an Allied victory and gain a foothold in the Middle East. Palestine became a land that was twice promised.

In 1896, Austrian Journalist Theodore Herzl published Der Judenstaat (The Jewish State). His book formalized a growing belief among world Jewry about the need for a Jewish state. The rise of Zionism, as the movement became known, was part of the general movement of ethnic and linguistic nationalism in the 19th century. In the case of the Jews, the idea was particularly audacious: they were widely dispersed, they did not speak the same language; in conventional terms they were not even a people. But at the first Zionist Congress in 1897 it was nonetheless agreed that a Jewish homeland should be established. It was subsequently agreed that this should be in Palestine, or biblical Israel, then within the Ottoman Empire.

In November 1914, the Ottoman Empire entered the First World War on the side of Germany. The war would be fought as much in the Middle East as in Europe, and the Ottomans found themselves pitted against Britain, France and Russia, all of whom had territorial aspirations in the region. The Ottoman Empire also faced a rebellion from its Arab citizens. The ruler of Mecca, Sherif Hussein, saw the war as an opportunity to attain Arab self-rule from its imperial masters. Britain, at first, supported the creation of an independent Arab state in return for Hussein's galvanization of Arab rebels against their Ottoman rulers. However, while Britain and France were allied against the Germans and their Ottoman supporters, they also competed against each otherfor territorial control of as much land in the declining empire as possible. The Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916 saw Britain, France and Russia agreeing to partition the Middle East between them, at the expense of the original territory Hussein believed to be part of his independent Arab state. In addition, to further political and strategic wartime aims, Britain also courted the Zionists, resulting in a web of double diplomacy and contradictory promises. The Balfour Declaration of 1917 implied a British goal of establishing in Palestine a national home for the Jewish people. Yet any attempt to fulfil this promise would undoubtedly prejudice the rights of the Palestinian Arabs currently residing in the territory.

It was within this triangle of competing interests - Palestinian Arab, Zionist and British - that Britain attempted to manage the Mandate of Palestine awarded at the San Remo Conference in April 1920. In 1922 the first partition of Palestine took place when the area east of the Jordan River was identified as a separate administration of Transjordan. Furthermore, the Balfour Declaration was formally integrated into the terms of the Mandate. Palestine was, therefore, the only mandate set up in the post-war period not to prepare the indigenous population for self-determination but instead to reconstitute an entirely new community - a Jewish state.

British policy during the Mandate tended to vacillate according to which groups demanded the most. The early 1930s were characterized by a rapid increase in Jewish immigration and land purchases. The rise to power of Adolf Hitler in Germany and increased anti-Semitism in Poland, Hungary and Romania led to a massive influx of immigrants from these countries. By 1936 the Jewish population made up approximately thirty percent of the total population of Palestine. Palestinian Arab frustration at both the British and the Zionists eventually exploded in what would later be called the "Great Arab Rebellion" which lasted for three years. In 1937, with the situation in Palestine still volatile, Britain sent a Royal Commission to investigation. The Peel Commission Report recommended the partition of Palestine. Accepted by the Zionists, it was rejected outright by the Palestinian Arabs. However, tensions in Palestine were soon overshadowed by the Second World War where, in the Holocaust, Jews faced the ultimate expression of anti-Semitism.

In the aftermath of the Second World War a weakened Britain struggled to retain control of an increasingly anarchical Palestine. Reviled by both sides, Britain turned the problem over to the United Nations. In November 1947, it divided Palestine into separate Jewish and Arab states. Sporadic but fierce violence erupted between Jews and Palestinian Arabs, and tensions ran high. The following May, Britain withdrew and the State of Israel was proclaimed. It was immediately invaded by Arab armies. After fierce fighting, a ceasefire was agreed in early 1949. It left an uneasy truce. Israel had beaten off the Arab forces, but had failed to take East Jerusalem. Equally important, over 400 Arab villages had been destroyed and up to 750,000 Palestinians had become refugees, crowded into the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. The name "Palestine" had been wiped off the map.

THE CONFLICT
The Arab-Isralei conflict has been the defining issue in the Middle East since 1948. It has impacted upon every Arab country and remains a central feature of global politics. After decades of violent conflict, a glimmer of resolution emerged in the early 1990s when the Israeli government and Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) agreed the *Oslo Accords*. However, the road to peace has since been stalled amid an atmosphere of injustice, distrust and recrimination. Sporadic episodes of violence in Lebanon, Israel and Gaza have demonstrated the distance that remains from a lasting resolution of this conflict.

For Israel, the war of 1948 became known as the War of Independence, for the Arabs "al-Nakba" or "the catastrophe". The armistice of 1949 reflected the status quo positions of each belligerent and, as such, Israel was awarded significantly more territory than it had been designated in the UN partition plan of 1947. An independent Palestine was not created. Instead the West Bank was under the control of Jordan, and Egypt occupied the Gaza Strip. Israel and Jordan assumed joint control of Jerusalem. Relations between Israel and its neighbours following the war remained volatile.

The hostility that followed became a prime cause of instability within the Middle East as well as a major focus of Cold War rivalry. To Egypt, Syria and Iraq - buttessed by the Soviet Union - Israel represented an affront to Arab nationalism but, with its support from the USA, an extension of American imperialism in the region. Three further full-scale Arab-Israeli wars broke out after 1949: in 1956, over Suez, when Israel inflicted a humiliating defeat on Egypt; in 1967, when in the fact of renewed Arab hostility Israel achieved a crushing pre-emptive strike against Egypt and then routed Jordanian, Syrian and Iraqi forces; and in 1973, when a combined Egyptian-Syrian attack was repulsed by Israel after days of desperate fighting. In all three cases, not only did Israel extend its territorial domination, occupying the West Bank, Gaza Strip, Sinai and the Golan Heights, but huge numbers of Palestinian refugees were created in Jordan and Lebanon, increasing the Palestinian sense of injustice and giving rise to militant Arab movements dedicated to winning back the lost territories. The misery and humiliation of life in refugee camps yielded a disgruntled mass receptive to revolutionary rhetoric. In 1967, the PLO assumed leadership of the struggle, using the refugee camps as a base for cross-border raids into Israel.

While defeat in 1973 had hardened the resolve of some Arab states to continue the war against Israel, Egypt, under President Sadat, sought to make peace. In 1978 the two sides agreed terms at Camp David in the USA, prompting outrage in the Arab World. The PLO, meanwhile, stepped up its attacks on Israel from new bases in Lebanon, sparking an Israeli invasion of southern Lebanon in 1982. Although the Israeli army withdrew from Beirut it continued to occupy a "security-zone" in southern Lebanon until May 2000. This, in turn, galvanized internal Lebanese resistance - Hezbollah. Life in the Occupied Territories had continued to decline, and by the late 1980s the failure of any international movement to secure peace and the increasingly oppressive of the occupation combined to create a powder keg of Palestinian frustration which exploded in the form of the first Intifada - "uprising" - in 1987. Early successes led directly to the declaration of the State of Palestine by the PLO leader Yasser Arafat in November 1988. In the Declaration he publicly endorsed the two-state solution, recognizing Israel's right to exist as a state.

The Gulf War in 1991 was also a defining moment in the Arab-Israeli conflict, undermining the position of both Israel and the PLO. In 1993 Israel and the PLO agreed a *Declaration of Principles* on interim self-government for the West Bank and Gaza Strip (the *Oslo Accords*). The following year, the Palestinian National Authority (PA) assumed responsibility for both areas with an understanding that further Israeli withdrawals and an extension of Palestinian self-rule would follow. In 1994 Jordan also made peace with Israel, while the following year Syria agreed to open talks with Israel.

However, in the years since Oslo little progress has been made. The Accords were never fully implemented despite a series of later agreements all designed to move the process forward. Fifty years after the partition of Palestine, the Palestinians had autonomous control over less than four percent of historic Palestine. This disappointment, along with the increasingly harsh conditions in the Occupied Territories, led to the rise in popularity of the Islamic resistance movement, Hamas, which began a series of attacks against Israeli targes. Since 2001, under prime ministers Ariel Sharon, Ehud Olmert and Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli government has adopted a more aggressive approach towards the Palestinians and other Arab adversaries. In 2006 Israeli forces attacked Hezbollah bases in Lebanon, causing widespread damage and loss of life. Despite an Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip in 2005, its Palestinian inhabitants have been subjected to a virtual blockade since Hamas seized control in June 2007. In an effort to destroy Hamas, responsible for rocket attacks against Israel, a devastating three-week offensive was launched on Gaza in 2008, resulting in the deaths of 1,400 Palestinians and 13 Israelis. In the occupied West Bank settlements continued to be built and the "fence/wall" has constituted the biggest change in landscape, in Israel's favour, since 1967. Despite the newly elected US President Barack Obama's rhetoric of a resuscitated peace process in the Middle East, the conflict shows no signs of ending.