Israel-Palestine Conflict - 100 Years of History!

in news •  7 years ago  (edited)

First of all ,  What are Israel and Palestine? Why are they fighting?

 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. 

 Though both Jews and Arab Muslims date their claims to the  land back a couple thousand years, 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:

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How did Israel become a country in the first place?

 Social and political developments in Europe convinced Jews they needed  their own country, and their ancestral homeland seemed like the right  place to establish it. European Jews — 90 percent of  all Jews at the time — arrived at Zionism partly because of rising  anti-Semitic persecution and partly because the Enlightenment introduced  Jews to secular nationalism. Between 1896 and 1948, hundreds of  thousands of Jews resettled from Europe to what was then  British-controlled Palestine, including large numbers forced out of  Europe during the Holocaust. 

 The Jewish residents accepted the deal. The Palestinians,  who saw the plan as an extension of a long-running Jewish attempt push  them out of the land, fought it. The Arab states of Egypt, Jordan, Iraq,  and Syria all later declared war on Israel, as well (albeit not to  defend the Palestinians). Israeli forces defeated the Palestinian militias and Arab armies in a vicious conflict that turned 700,000 Palestinian civilians into refugees. The UN partition promised 56 percent of British Palestine for the Jewish state; by the end of the war, Israel possessed 77 percent  — everything except the West Bank and the eastern quarter of Jerusalem  (controlled by Jordan), as well as the Gaza Strip (controlled by Egypt).  It left Israelis with a state, but not Palestinians. 

Everything about Nakba : 

 The 1948 war uprooted 700,000 Palestinians from their  homes, creating a refugee crisis that is still not resolved.  Palestinians call this mass eviction the Nakba — Arabic for  "catastrophe" — and its legacy remains one of the most intractable  issues in ongoing peace negotiations. Not surprisingly, Palestinians and Israelis remember the birth of the Palestinian refugee crisis very differently (here's a helpful side-by-side comparison).  Palestinians often see a years long, premeditated Jewish campaign to  ethnically cleanse Palestine of Arabs; Israelis tend to blame  spontaneous Arab fleeing, Arab armies, and/or unfortunate wartime  accidents. Today, there are more than 7 million  Palestinian refugees, defined as people displaced in 1948 and their  descendants. A core Palestinian demand in peace negotiations is some  kind of justice for these refugees, most commonly in the form of the  "right of return" to the homes their families abandoned in 1948. 

 One of the core problems in negotiations, then, is how to find a way to  get justice for the refugees that both the Israeli and Palestinian  people can accept. Ideas proposed so far include financial compensation and limited resettlement in Israel, but the two sides have never agreed on the details of how these would work. 

Everything about Jerusalem

 Jerusalem is a city that straddles the border between Israel  and the West Bank. It's home to some of the holiest sites in both  Judaism and Islam, and so both Israel and Palestine want to make it  their capital. How to split the city fairly remains one of the  fundamental issues dividing Israelis and Palestinians — and on December  6, President Donald Trump weighed in on Israel's side.  For the first 20 years of Israel's existence, Jerusalem was  divided. Israel controlled the parts of Jerusalem and its suburbs  inside the red dotted line on this map, while Jordan controlled  everything outside of it (blue dotted lines separate Jerusalem proper  from suburbs): 

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 The United States consistently refused to recognize  Jerusalem as Israel's capital, believing that a formal announcement  could spark violence and would fatally undermine the US' position as an  honest broker between Israelis and Palestinians. President Trump decided  to change that longstanding position in December. The new American  policy recognizes Jerusalem as Israel's capital and begin the process of  moving the embassy, but still allows for negotiations over what parts  of the city would be permanently Israeli and what parts would be given  to Palestine in the event of a peace agreement. Assuming Trump's policy doesn't completely derail any  chances for a peace process, there are still serious practical issues  surrounding the division of Jerusalem. Not only is there an issue of  ensuring Israeli and Palestinian access to the holy sites, but Jews have  moved in and around Jerusalem in huge numbers. They now make up about  two-thirds of the city: 

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Peace Process between Israel-Palestine : 

Oslo Accords (1993) :  

In 1993, Israeli officials led by Yitzhak Rabin and Palestinian leaders from the Palestine Liberation Organization led by Yasser Arafat  strove to find a peaceful solution through what became known as the  Oslo peace process. A crucial milestone in this process was Arafat's  letter of recognition of Israel's right to exist. In 1993, the Oslo  Accords were finalized as a framework for future Israeli–Palestinian  relations. The crux of the Oslo agreement was that Israel would  gradually cede control of the Palestinian territories over to the  Palestinians in exchange for peace. The Oslo process was delicate and  progressed in fits and starts, the process took a turning point at the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin and finally unraveled when Arafat and Ehud Barak failed to reach agreement at Camp David in July 2000. Robert Malley, special assistant to US President Bill Clinton  for Arab–Israeli Affairs, has confirmed that while Barak made no formal  written offer to Arafat, the US did present concepts for peace which  were considered by the Israeli side yet left unanswered by Arafat "the  Palestinians' principal failing is that from the beginning of the Camp  David summit onward they were unable either to say yes to the American  ideas or to present a cogent and specific counterproposal of their own". Consequently, there are different accounts of the proposals considered. 

 1996–99 agreements

 Newly elected Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared a new policy following the many suicide attacks by Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad since 1993, including a wave of suicide attacks prior to the Israeli elections of May 1996. Netanyahu declared a tit-for-tat  policy which he termed "reciprocity," whereby Israel would not engage  in the peace process if Arafat continued with what Netanyahu defined as  the Palestinian revolving door policy, i.e., incitement and direct or indirect support of terrorism. The Hebron and Wye Agreements were signed during this period, after Israel considered that its conditions were partially met. 

Hebron agreement

Protocol Concerning the Redeployment in Hebron, also known as The  Hebron Protocol or Hebron Agreement, began 7 January and was concluded  from 15 January to 17 January 1997 between Israel and the PLO.  This agreement dealt with the redeployment of Israeli military forces  in Hebron in accordance with the Oslo Accords. The agreement dealt with  redeployments in Hebron, security issues and other concerns. 

Wye River Memorandum

The Wye River Memorandum was a political agreement negotiated to  implement the Oslo Accords, completed on 23 October 1998. It was signed  by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and PLO Chairman Yasser  Arafat. It was negotiated at Wye River, MD (at the Wye River Conference  Center) and signed at the White House with President Bill Clinton as the  official witness. On 17 November 1998, Israel's 120-member parliament,  the Knesset,  approved the Wye River Memorandum by a vote of 75-19. The agreement  dealt with further redeployments in the West Bank, security issues and  other concerns. 

 Camp David 2000 Summit

In 2000, US President Bill Clinton convened a peace summit between Palestinian President Yasser Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak. In May of that year, according to Nathan Thrall,  Israel had offered Palestinians 66% of the West Bank, with 17% annexed  to Israel, and a further 17% not annexed but under Israeli control, and  no compensating swap of Israeli territory.The Israeli prime minister reportedly offered the Palestinian leader approximately 95% of the West Bank and the entire Gaza Strip if 69 Jewish settlements (which comprise 85% of the West Bank's Jewish settlers) be ceded to Israel. East Jerusalem would have fallen for the most part under Israeli sovereignty, with the exception of most suburbs with  heavy non-Jewish populations surrounded by areas annexed to Israel. The issue of the Palestinian right of return would be solved through significant monetary reparations. According to Palestinian sources, the remaining area would be under Palestinian control. Depending on how the security roads would be configured, these Israeli  roads might impede free travel by Palestinians throughout their proposed  nation and reduce the ability to absorb Palestinian refugees. Borders,  airspace, and water resources of the Palestinian state would have been  left in Israeli hands. President Arafat rejected this offer and did not propose a  counter-offer. No tenable solution was crafted which would satisfy both  Israeli and Palestinian demands, even under intense U.S. pressure.  Clinton blamed Arafat for the failure of the Camp David Summit. 

Kerry-Led Talks : 

 Direct negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians began on 29  July 2013 following an attempt by United States Secretary of State John Kerry to restart the peace process. Martin Indyk  of the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. was appointed by the  US to oversee the negotiations. Indyk served as U.S. ambassador to  Israel and assistant secretary of state for Near East affairs during the  Clinton administration. Hamas, the Palestinian government in Gaza, rejected Kerry's announcement, stating that Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas has no legitimacy to negotiate in the name of the Palestinian people. The negotiations were scheduled to last up to nine months to reach a  final status to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict by mid-2014. The  Israeli negotiating team was led by veteran negotiator Justice Minister Tzipi Livni, while the Palestinian delegation was led by Saeb Erekat, also a former negotiator. Negotiations started in Washington, DC and were slated to move to the King David Hotel in Jerusalem and finally to Hebron. A deadline was set for establishing a broad outline for an agreement by  29 April 2014. On the expiry of the deadline, negotiations collapsed,  with the US Special Envoy Indyk reportedly assigning blame mainly to  Israel, while the US State Department insisting no one side was to blame but that "both sides did things that were incredibly unhelpful."

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Thanks for Reading! I hope you gained some collective knowledge about the issue.



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