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Diary #1

The intractable conflict between Israel and Palestine.

Luis Esteban Vela Donoso

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RCL 201 Conflict and its resolution

January 30, 2018

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The Conflict between Israel and Palestine

The Arab-Israeli conflict is one of those problems that we hear every day on the news

or in the social media, and even if we have listened about it over and over again, we don’t

really understand the background of a conflict so serious as this one. Why the Israelites and

the people of Palestine can´t be in peace? Why the conflict is so extreme, that it has caused

an uninterrupted war over more than 50 years? The reasons of why this conflict is so

intractable are more complex than just a simple fight for a piece of land.

To understand the conflict, we must go back to the end of World War I. During the

conflict, the Allies needed to gain more alliances with more countries to defeat the Axis

countries. That is when Great Britain promised the Israelites that if they helped them, Great

Britain would give them the territory of Israel; in other hand the same promise was made to

the Arabic people who also wanted the territory of Palestine that had been of their own before

the Ottoman Empire took it from them. When the Allies won the war, Great Britain and

France took part of the Palestine territory, and both people claimed they right to the land that

Great Britain had promised them.

When World War II finished Great Britain had not yet given the territories to any of

them, but after this new world war Great Britain couldn’t take the control of Palestine

anymore. Palestine was in the middle of a lot of internal conflicts, so by a decision made by

the ONU on 1948 Great Britain left the territory splitting Palestine in two: the Arabic zone,

and the Israeli zone.

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By cultural and religious differences, the Arabic people have hated the Jewish people

for a long time, so they refuse to recognize Israel as a country. The exact next day after Great

Britain left Palestine an Arabic coalition (Transjordan, Egypt, Syria, Lebanon and Iraq)

invaded the new state of Israel, starting the war of 1948, that would be the beginning of the

hostilities between these two factions, that would last until today.

Knowing the antecedents and the root of the problem we can understand better the

reason of the conflict and we can analyze the actors, the reason of why they are involved in

this conflict, and how it can go to an end.

First, we have the Israeli (Jewish) people and their wish to stay in Israel. For the

Jewish people the formation of Israel ends the long period of anti-Semitism, discrimination,

and a wandering nomadic crossing throughout the world, it gives them a new identity and a

place in which they can develop their life without the need of asking permission to someone

else. Since the beginning of the XX century the Jewish people have been victims of racial

and ideological hate all over the world, especially in Europe, so they had to spread all over

the world finding new countries in which they could be accepted. The climax of this wave of

hate and xenophobia reach with the promotion to power of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party

in Germany in the year of 1933. The racial hatred grew disproportionately throughout

Europe, and after the WWII the horror of Holocaust shocked the whole world. With this on

their backs, the Jewish people found on Israel the promise of a real home, a home in which

they would be the hostess. The home where finally, after a long period of abuses and hate

against them over the entire world, they could rest together with their brothers expressing

their faith and beliefs. But more important even, it was a promise of freedom for the Jewish

people.
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The other actor in this conflict would be the Arabic people of Palestine who want

desperately to expel the Jewish people form Palestine and end with the nation of Israel. From

the perspective of the Arabic people Palestine was their territory, and an external presence

(such as the Jewish) right in the middle of their territory was not something that they would

welcomed. Since the beginning of XX century, the Zionism movement of the Jewish were

something alarming by the amount of people that were migrating, and the Arabic people saw

the Jewish as potential thread to their autonomy. So, when the state of Israel was founded, it

was seemed by Arabic people as a thread. As a culture that have been repudiated all over the

world, and by all the prejudges against the Jewish, the Arabs seem the Jewish as people that

will menace their lifestyle, their economy, religion, but most important their sovereignty on

the region. So, the reason of the Palestine´s people to be involved in this conflict is because

they want to secure their control on the zone of Palestine, they didn’t feel secure with an

external new country right next to them with wishes of growth, expansion, and development

because all of this would affect directly in a negative way to all the Palestine people.

The way this conflict is perceived by the rest of the world is a mistake because of the

mismanagement that medias must inform the reasons and the advance of the conflict. Most

people thought that this is a conflict between two countries that have very extreme and radical

ideas and misunderstandings related to religion, so for people, this is a religious war that have

taken more than 50 years, and the prize that both sides are seeking for is the control of

Jerusalem, the sacred city for both cultures.

Nothing further form reality, the religious factor is just the top of the iceberg of this

conflict; of course, is part of the reasons of why both cultures are in conflict but is not just a

fight for a sacred piece of land. What people do not see are all the needs, for both cultures,
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that implies winning the territory of Palestine. As said before, the Jewish people have the

need to belong somewhere, and with more reason after the entire century of hate and racism

that their people have suffered among the XX century. For them, having and defending their

territory is a basic need in which lies all their principles and beliefs. Once and for all, the

Jewish people have a place which they can called home, and they are going to defend it, even

if that costs their lives. For Arabic-Palestine people, they are already in home, and that an

outsider comes to their house and start messing the autonomy and calm they have through

years is a reason for conflict. Maybe at the beginning the actions of the Arabic people of

Palestine may be judged when they tried to exterminate Israel, but now the things are the

opposite of then; Israel seems to be a thread to the Arabic-Palestine autonomy that have been

demonstrated through the expansion of this new country over the region, violating their

sovereignty (from the point of view of Arabic-Palestine people). Jerusalem is one place in

common that both Arabic-Palestine and Jewish people want but is far from being the real

reason for the entire conflict.

It´s obvious that the needs of this conflict are very complex, needed the

comprehension of a look through the past to understand it magnitude, and that is why this

has been such an intractable conflict. Since the beginning, there was no sign of any of these

two sides to lower their ambition against the other, and that is the reason of why this conflict

started as a war and have continued as a war for over a long time. The international

community couldn’t accept that these two sides just continue fighting each other since one

would be destroyed, since there has been no intention of a negotiation from both parts that

reach to a satisfactory agreement. To prevent that, the ONU had tried to act as a mediator in

this conflict trying to make both parts to reach an agreement to peace.

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ONU had created a lot of resolutions related to this conflict, but most of them has

been to stop wars or armed conflicts that was happening in a specific time. These resolutions

could not be called as an ADR type of solving the conflict. But, in 1993 an historical

landmark occurs. The “Oslo Agreements” were a conference in Oslo between the Prime

Minister of Israel (Yithzak Rabin) and the leader of the Arabic-Palestine people (Yasser

Arafat). This conference was the first attempt of ADR in the conflict that almost made

something valuable to reach peace between these to sides. Even if this conference didn’t

reach the principal objective to reach a final peace, it reach some deals between the two

parties that were forging the beginning to what can be an end to the conflict, and a peace to

both people.

The Oslo Agreements gave way to other reunions with an ADR model that was the

reflection of the importance of the international community to solve this conflict. The “Camp

David reunion of 2000” was an example of the push that U.S.A. gave to the parties to reach

the peace.

Even if the conflict has lasted since the creation of Israel on 1948 until now, sooner

or later both parties are going to see that is impossible to stand a conflict so harsh as this

without having a limit. The ADR models that were put into practice at the end of XX century

were the beginning of a wish of parties to end the conflict, and the maximum expression of

the international community that they are available to help them to end it. Sooner or later,

both parties will see the importance that a path to peace is; and when they realize this, that

will be the moment in which they will low their standards to forge a lasting peace, in which

both parties will find the help of the entire international community to finish this conflict of

more than half a century.

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BBC. 10 preguntas para entender por que pelean israelies y palestinos. (July 2014):

http://www.bbc.com/mundo/noticias/2014/08/140801_israel_palestinos_conflicto_pregunta

s_basicas_jp

El Nuevo Dia. ¿Por que pelean los israelies y los palestinos? (October 2015):

https://www.elnuevodia.com/noticias/mundo/nota/porquepeleanlosisraeliesypalestinos-

2112732/

Felipe Garrido. La historia del conflicto palestino-israeli. (July 2014):

http://www.eldefinido.cl/actualidad/mundo/2652/Te_explicamos_el_conflicto_palestinoisra

eli/

John Bright. La Historia de Israel. (1970). Bilbao: La Editorial Vizcaina

MidEastWeb. In a nutshell: Israeli Palestinian conflict. (January 2016):

http://www.mideastweb.org/nutshell.htm

Scepia. Yitzhak Rabin. (June 2005):

https://web.archive.org/web/20050307002702/http://www.rabincenter.org.il:80/site/en/rabi

n.asp?pi=17

Tanya Reinhart. Como acabar con la Guerra de 1948. (August 2003). New York:

Seven Stories press.