HISTORY OF THE HOLY LAND
Palestine-Israel Conflict Brief History
The main headline issue these days has been the conflict of Israel and Palestine because of the recent confrontations in Gaza and Israel. Investigation of the issue drives us back into the dark pages of history that reveals on us the facts. Israel and Palestine are both situated in Middle East with the Arab countries including Jordan, Syria, Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Egypt as their neighbor countries. The story is all about the Holy Land with the complicated history starting from the Ottoman Empire which had hold on almost the whole Middle East in the time during 14th to 19th century but started to become weak and lose its control at the end of 19th century. According to the Ottoman Records, 87% of the total population was Muslim, 10% Christians and 3% Jews.
There was a sudden rise in Nationalism in the last stages of 19th century with the formation of different new states on the basis of national identity. The Jews also started to think about themselves that they also need to have a state- a Jewish state where they could live peacefully as they were persecuted throughout Europe by the other nations and religions and they had to face a lot of cruelty and injustice to them. Theodor Herzi was a man who started the Zionist movement, though the sentiment existed already. This movement was all about the Jewish Nationalism and the migration back to their Holy land (Palestine), as according to him Judaism was not only a religion but also a nation. So the migration started on a small scale towards Palestine.
This migration continued but there came in the Balfour Declaration by Britain in 1917 while the World War 1 was going on and the Ottoman Empire was on the verge of defeat. According to this declaration by Sir Arthur Balfour, Britain would give home to the Jews in Palestine after the war ends which they were struggling for. At the same time they also secretly had made a plan of division of the territories with the other allies in 1916 with Palestine in their own side. Arabs were also at the same time promised to be given Palestine in 1915 as a reward for being against the Ottoman Empire in the support of Britain. The English played this game well.
So, after the WW1 ends, a new government in Palestine was formed under British supervision as their colony with the abrupt increase in migration with the Jewish population rising from 3 to 30% from 1929 to 1939. In this way, the Jews started becoming more and more in number as well as in power by buying land in Palestine and evicting the local Palestinians from their own land. As a result, the Arabs started revolt against the British mandate in 1936 as the Jews were becoming powerful and the Arabs were being suppressed. The British remained to some extent safe but they defined a specific limit for the migrants to come in Palestine that offended the Jewish people who then turned their gun to the British.
In 1939, WW2 had started during which we saw Holocaust- a brutal human genocide by Adolf Hitler in which nearly 4 million Jews were brutally killed. The Jews got terrified and a large scale migration occurred from Europe especially Germany to Palestine. Situation of Palestine became more worst with the increase in Jewish refugees and their land grabbing and settlements policy. The British couldn’t control it and just left off the region leaving the matter to United Nations.
UN passed a resolution on 1947 according to which the Holy Land was divided into two states including Israel for the Jews with almost 57% land and Palestine for the Muslims with more or less than 43% of it. Jerusalem was declared as a territory under international control. But soon after this resolution, the neighboring Arab countries launched a war called Arab-Israel war against Israel rejecting the division by UN. But, Israel won the war and successfully extended his boundaries even more than before. Egypt captured Gaza and Jordan did West Bank. This war resulted in the great loss in the form of at least seven lac refugees who migrated from Israel to the other countries. PLO (Palestine Liberation Organization) was created in 1964 initiated by Arab League as a representative of Palestinian people. Yasser Arafat was the leader and they struggled for the freedom of Palestine. They caused a lot of damage to Israel including plane hijacks and bomb attacks and increased the pressure.
Tensions continued until a new war started between in 1967 being called as Six Days War. As a result of the war, Israel got a tremendous success with the three times increase in its territorial boundary taking hold of Golan heights, Gaza, Sinai peninsula (a part of Egypt) and west bank (of which Jordan had control after the Arab Israel war of 147–48). The Arabs were defeated badly and crushed in a way. Then in 1973 there was Yom Kippur War in which Egypt and Syria tried to regain Sinai Peninsula and Golan Heights. After the war, Camp David Accord was signed according to which Sinai Peninsula was returned to Egypt and they in return accepted Israel as a state. After that the situation became a little better than before and tensions decreased across the countries.
But, the struggle continued and a wave of confrontations (known as 1st Intifada) and tension came in 1987 when there were a lot of protests, violence, attacks in which hundreds of the people were killed. Same was the time when HAMAS (an Islamic Militant Group) was found which was more nationalistic group than PLO as they wanted to get their land back, not considering Israel a state. But PLO on the other hand, accepted Israel as a state after negotiations which resulted in Oslo Accord in 1993 and Israel and United Nations also accepted PLO as the representative of the Palestinian people. Palestine Authority was formed for the governance of Gaza and West bank by the Palestinians.
Peace talks between Israel and Palestine unfortunately collapsed in 2000 which led to an increase in violence that came to be known as the Aqṣa intifada (2nd Intifada) as it was decided to cease fire for 5 years for a peaceful solution which they could not reach. As a result, thousands of innocents were killed and brutally murdered in attacks and bomb blasts until 2005. In 2002, Israel also decide to construct a wall around West Bank for the so called purpose of stopping violence and attack which was even called illegal by UN and other powers.
After this Intifada, there was a phase shift in policy and management on the side of Israel that they tried not to solve the issue but to manage after it. They withdrew their forces from Gaza and West Bank which strengthened Hamas. But at the same time, there was a rightward shift as well in Israeli politics which was more nationalistic and extremist. When Hamas won the elections in Gaza against Fatah (the PLO supported Party), they became more powerful and started agitation again Fatah and there we saw a civil war between Hamas and Fatah known as the battle of Gaza which resulted into the partition of Palestine into two parts: Gaza (in control of Hamas) and West Bank (in control of Fatah and PLO). After 2006, Hamas and Israel came face to face almost three times in war and Gaza was annihilated badly. The situation became worse and there were a lot of casualties in which the innocent lives suffered a lot.
The same situation is still going on and the recent confrontation is the result of this historical conflict. Because Israel is creating new permanent settlements in Palestine’s area of West Bank So that they can totally occupy it. Both of the sides want to eliminate each other and regain the whole land. The extremist right wing ideology is the main cause behind the conflict’s not being able to be solved as every leader has been brutally murdered who has ever tried to negotiate for a better situation including Anwar Sadat of Egypt (because of peace treaty of Camp David Accord) and Yitzhak Rabin of Israel (because of OSLO Accord) etc. to my thoughts, the issue can only be solved with negotiations and talks with both the side showing a little bit of flexibility in their extremist ideologies.
