Israel-Palestine

The world’s most controversial conflict

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is one of the world’s longest-
running and most controversial conflicts. At its heart, it is a
conflict between two self-determination movements — the
Jewish Zionist project and the Palestinian nationalist project —
that lay claim to the same territory. But it is so, so much more
complicated than that, with seemingly every fact and historical
detail small and large litigated by the two sides and their
defenders.

Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs both want

the same land. And a compromise has proven
difficult to find.
Modern Israel has its origins in the Zionism movement, established in
the late 19th century by Jews in the Russian Empire who called for the
establishment of a territorial Jewish state after enduring persecution.
Ottoman-controlled Palestine, the original home of the Jews, was
chosen as the most desirable location for a Jewish state.
After the failed Russian Revolution of 1905, growing numbers of Eastern
European and Russian Jews began to immigrate to Palestine, joining
the few thousand Jews who had arrived earlier.
The Jewish settlers insisted on the use of Hebrew as their spoken
language.
With the collapse of the Ottoman Empire during World War I, Britain
took over Palestine. In 1917, Britain issued the “Balfour Declaration,”
which declared its intent to establish a Jewish homeland in Palestine.
Although protested by the Arab states, the Balfour Declaration was
included in the British mandate over Palestine, which was authorized
by the League of Nations in 1922. Because of Arab opposition to the
establishment of any Jewish state in Palestine, British rule continued
throughout the 1920s and ‘30s.
Beginning in 1929, Arabs and Jews openly fought in Palestine,
and Britain attempted to limit Jewish immigration as a means
of appeasing the Arabs. As a result of the Holocaust in
Europe, many Jews illegally entered Palestine during World
War II. Jewish groups employed terrorism against British
forces in Palestine, which they thought had betrayed the
Zionist cause. At the end of World War II, in 1945, the United
States took up the Zionist cause. Britain, unable to find a
practical solution, referred the problem to the United
Nations, which in November 1947 voted to partition Palestine.
Israel is the world’s only Jewish state, located just east of the
Mediterranean Sea. Palestinians, the Arab population that hails from the
land Israel now controls, refer to the territory as Palestine, and want to
establish a state by that name on all or part of the same land. The
Israeli-Palestinian conflict is over who gets what land and how it’s
controlled.

Israel in red, Palestinian-majority

territories in pink.
Though both Jews and Arab Muslims date their claims to the
land more than two thousand years ago, the current political
conflict began in the early 20th century. Jews fleeing
persecution in Europe wanted to establish a national
homeland in what was then an Arab- and Muslim-majority
territory in the Ottoman and later British Empire. The Arabs
resisted, seeing the land as rightfully theirs. An early United
Nations plan to give each group part of the land failed, and
Israel and the surrounding Arab nations fought several wars
over the territory. Today’s lines largely reflect the outcomes
of two of these wars, one waged in 1948 and another in 1967.
The
1967 war is
particularly
important
for today’s
conflict, as
it left Israel
in control of
the West
Bank and
Gaza Strip,
two
territories
home to
large
Palestinian
populations: Note that since 1967, Israel has returned Sinai to Egypt
The primary approach to solving the conflict today
is a so-called “two-state solution” that would
establish Palestine as an independent state in Gaza
and most of the West Bank, leaving the rest of the
land to Israel. Though the two-state plan is clear in
theory, the two sides are still deeply divided over
how to make it work in practice.

The alternative to a two-state solution is a “one-state

solution,” wherein all of the land becomes either one big
Israel or one big Palestine. Most observers think this would
cause more problems than it would solve, but this outcome is
becoming more likely over time for political and demographic
reasons.
Sources:

https://www.vox.com/2018/11/20/18080002/israel-
palestine-conflict-basics

https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/state-of-
israel-proclaimed

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-
39960461