The Palestinian-Israeli conflict is an ongoing tussle between Palestinians and Israelis that started way back in the late 1800s. The roots of the tensions date back to the Jewish immigration and later the sectarian wrangles between Arabs and Jews in Mandatory Palestine (Tessler 14). Notwithstanding the long-term peace process, including Israel’s reconciliation with Jordan and Egypt, the Palestinians and Jews have failed to agree. For this reason, the conflict has been deemed as the most intractable in the world, with 2018 being the fifty-first year of the Israeli occupation of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. The main issues in contention include mutual recognition, the control of Jerusalem, water rights, the freedom of return and movement of Palestinians, the settlements of the Israelis, borders, and security (Government of Canada). Palestine is a land rich in cultural, religious, and historic sites that are of great interest to the world. It has been the central theme of several international conferences on security matters, human rights, and historical rights. The violence in the region has been hindering not just tourism but the overall access to the hotly contested areas (Wright). This paper examines the Palestinian-Israeli conflict at depth, including its history, causes, the main issues in contention, the current situation, and the ideal solution. It argues that the longstanding conflict between the Palestinians and Israelis is as a result of Palestinians’ dissatisfaction with the territory allotted to them in the partition plan and the remedy for the crisis is the two-state solution.
Analysis of the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict
History: 1880-1945
The conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians began in the late 1800s and early 1900s with the rise of strong national movements in the Middle East among both the Arab and the Jewish factions, each with the goal of achieving sovereignty. At the time of the founding of the United Nations on October 24, 1945, Palestine was under British rule through a Mandate received from the League of Nations in 1922. One of the critical issues the Mandatory Power had to address after World War II was the question of a proposed Jewish state in Palestine, for the British Government had outlined in the 1917 “Balfour Declaration” that it favored the establishment of a national home for the Jews in Palestine, provided the civil and religious rights of the existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine will not be prejudiced (United Nations, The Origins and Evolution 144). Until then, the Arab inhabitants, who in the mid-1940s comprised roughly two-thirds of Palestine’s population of two million, had consistently opposed the rising Jewish immigration. Thus, it is evident that the root of the conflict was the Arab opposition to Jewish settlement in Palestine.
Large-scale rioting against the Jews in Jerusalem began as early back as 1920 after the return of several hardline Arab nationalists to Palestine from Damascus under the leadership of Amin al-Husseini. Riots also took place in Jaffa in 1921. The Jews in response established the Haganah, which was their paramilitary force. The riots nonetheless went on, and in 1929, a string of anti-Jewish uprisings in Safed and Hebron resulted in a significant number of Jewish casualties, ultimately ending in the evacuation of Jews from Gaza and Hebron (Sela 665). By the 1930s, many militant Arab nationalists had been drawn from all over the Middle East into the Palestinian Arab struggle for sovereignty, the foremost among them being a Syrian national named Sheikh Izaddin al-Qassam. Al-Qassam set up the Black Hand, a militant group that paved the way for the Arab revolt in 1936. The Arabs conducted uprisings against the Jews and the British between 1936 and 1939, but they were bloodily repressed. The riots, nevertheless, led to the creation of the Peel Commission whose responsibility was to partition Palestine. The Palestinian Arabs, however, rejected it. The violence only subsided when World War II began because the War diverted the attention of the warring groups. Still, about 5000 casualties were incurred, the majority of whom were Palestinian Arabs. The two sides even united for a time under British command to fight Germans in North America during the War (Sela 665).
The Partition Plan and End of British Mandate
After WWII, however, tensions arose once again between the Yishuv, who were Jewish residents in Palestine before Israel was established as a state, and the leadership of the Arab Palestinians over the fate of the survivors of the Nazi Holocaust. With the violence escalating, the British Government decided to bring the Palestine question before the newly formed United Nations. The UN General Assembly consequently adopted Resolution 181(II), which recommended a plan to partition Palestine into a Jewish state, the City of Jerusalem, and an Arab state. The plan also outlined steps to be taken towards independence (United Nations, The Origins and Evolution 144). The Jewish Agency accepted the resolution notwithstanding its dissatisfaction over issues like Jewish immigration, but the Palestinian Arabs along with the Arab States rejected it because they believed it breached the UN Charter that gave people the right to choose their destiny (145). This illustration clearly shows that Palestinian Arabs would not tolerate the idea of having a Jewish state in Palestine. They felt that establishing a Zionist State in Palestine was a serious infringement of their rights.
Consequently, violence broke out in Palestine, and Jewish and Arab militias carried out attacks against each other. In most cases, however, the Yishuv was on the defensive and only carried out retaliatory strikes albeit occasionally. The Arabs, on the other hand, were relentless in their provocations and attacks. The got support from the Arab League through the Arab Liberation Army. Despite the strong backing, the Arab forces were nearing a complete collapse by the spring of 1948. The Yishuv kept advancing and annexing new territory so that there arose a significant refugee problem among Palestinian Arabs. In retaliation, sporadic violence broke out against the Jews in the entire Arab world which created an opposite wave of refugees (Sela 668). The violence ultimately led to a special session of the UN General Assembly that lasted from the 16th of April to 14th of May 1948. The outcome of this meeting was the cessation of all military activities in Palestine and the establishment of the Truce Commission, whose goal was to help bring about a ceasefire. The Assembly dissolved the Palestine Commission and appointed a mediator to foster a peaceful settlement in collaboration with the Truce Commission.
The First Arab-Israeli War
On May 14, 1948, the UK surrendered its Mandate over Palestine and disbanded its forces. On that same day, a proclamation was made by the Jewish Agency asserting the establishment of Israel as a state on the territory the partition plan had allotted them. There followed an outbreak of fierce hostilities between Jewish and Arab communities and on the following day, the neighboring Arab states sent troops to invade Israel and aid Palestinian Arabs. After four weeks of fighting, the UN Security Council called for a four-week truce on May 29, 1948. The truce went into effect on June 11. No agreement, however, could be reached on the truce extension and so the fighting resumed on July 8 (United Nations, The Origins and Evolution 147). On July 15, the Security Council resolved that the situation in the Middle East constituted a threat to peace. Consequently, it ordered a ceasefire and proclaimed that noncompliance would be a violation of the peace, thereby necessitating the consideration of enforcement measures as outlined in Chapter VII of the UN Charter. The second truce was enacted in line with the resolution. By this time Israel had control over much of the Arab territory as given in the partition resolution, in addition to western Jerusalem. The remaining areas of Ga
za and the West Bank of River Jordan were overseen by Egypt and Jordan respectively (Morris 324).
The fighting led to a major humanitarian crisis involving the displacement of roughly 750,000 Palestinians from their lands. The tensions were finally resolved with the signing of the armistice between Israel and Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan under the auspices of the United Nations. The purpose of the truce was not to recognize or establish any custodial, territorial, or other rights, interests or claims of any party. Overall, the war resulted in more than 15,000 casualties (Sela 668). This elucidation shows that it was not just the Palestinian Arabs who were against the Jews but rather the entire Arab world. A strong anti-Semite feeling seemed to have pervaded the Arabs back then, causing them to gang up against Israel, with a desire to scrape out the Jewish nation from the face of the earth.
The Six-Day War
In the 1950s, Egypt and Jordan backed the cross-border strikes on Israel by the Palestinian Fedayeen fighters, and in retaliation, Israel conducted reprisal operations in host nations. The Suez Crisis of 1956 culminated in Israel’s temporal occupation of the Gaza Strip and the expulsion of all Palestinian authority, which was restored later after the Israelis withdrew. In 1964, Yasser Arafat established the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), which, besides receiving support from the Arab League governments, was also admitted into the League (Morris 325).
The Six-Day War took place in 1967, and it significantly affected Palestinian nationalism because Israel gained control of both the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. As a result, PLO could not set up command and was forced to relocate to Jordan where it set up its headquarters. The base, however, collapsed in 1970 when a civil war broke out between Palestinians and Jordanians. The Palestinians were defeated and forced to shift to South Lebanon where they took control of vast areas of land. They increased insurgency in that region, making it their base for launching strikes on Israel and orchestrate plane hijackings globally. This drew the retaliation of Israel. The 1989 Coastal Road massacre prompted Israel to invade South Lebanon albeit they withdrew quickly. Israel sided with the Lebanese government in the Lebanon War of 1982 and defeated most Palestinian militants in just a few weeks so that PLO had to relocate its headquarters to Tunisia (Sela 668).
Israel’s involvement in the Lebanese civil war, however, had some unforeseen consequences, including the development of conflicts with Syria and Iranian Shia militants. The Iranian-backed Shia militants consolidated to form the Hizbullah and Amal, which assimilated whatever was left of Palestinian organizations and has since then been launching strikes on Galilee (Sela 668).
Palestinians orchestrated their first uprising in 1987 due to the seemingly endless occupation of their territory by the Israelis. Efforts to resolve the conflict started in the early 1990s given the triumph of the 1982 Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty. The peace process between Israel and Palestine led to the 1993 Oslo Accords, which allowed the PLO to return to the Gaza Strip and West Bank and institute the Palestinian National Authority. However, the peace process suffered opposition from radical Islamic groups of Palestine, including the Islamic Jihad of Palestine and Hamas, who initiated attacks on the Israelis. The peace process suffered a major blow in 1996 when Prime Minister Rabin of Israel was assassinated. The negotiations became unsuccessful, and consequently, strife re-erupted in September of 2000 and lasted till 2005. The wrangles heightened to the point that the national security forces of Palestine openly contended with the defense forces of Israel. Israel ordered the removal of its troops from Palestine in 2005, but the UN Human Rights Watch along with several other international bodies still deem Israel as the dominant power in the Gaza Strip for Israel regulates the airspace, movement of persons and goods, and the territorial waters (Amnesty International).
In the 2006 parliamentary elections in Palestine, Hamas won a 44% plurality. This caused Israel to threaten to implement economic sanctions if Hamas would refuse to uphold earlier Palestinian-Israeli agreements, acknowledge the right of Israel to exist, and forsake violence. Hamas rejected these terms, and an internal political struggle ensued between Hamas and Fatah that soon escalated into violence. Hamas took control of the Gaza Strip, causing Israel to set up a naval blockade (Erlanger). Egypt likewise cooperated and set up a ground blockade on its border. Tensions nonetheless kept rising, and in late 2008, Israel initiated Operation Cast Lead on Gaza that led to property loss and thousands of civilian casualties. A ceasefire only ensued after international mediators intervened (Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs).
More Recent Developments
Since March 30, Palestinians in the Gaza Strip have been carrying out weekly demonstrations between Israel and the Gaza Strip. Albeit many of the protesters were peaceful, there were some who were more daring and would storm the perimeter fence and cast objects and rocks. Israel’s security forces have so far killed 86 demonstrators and wounded roughly 3700. The worst period of violence since 2014 also occurred recently when the Israeli military and Hamas clashed. Before a ceasefire was reached, Hamas militants shot over 100 rockets into Israel and Israel’s response was to strive over 50 targets in Gaza during the 24-hour flare-up (Council on Foreign Relations).
The Two-State Solution
The two-state solution is a solution to the Palestinian-Israeli dispute that calls for two states for two factions to resolve the conflict. This solution envisages an independent Palestinian State alongside an Israeli State west of the Jordan. The border between the two states is still being disputed, with Arab and Palestinian leadership clinging onto the 1967 borders that Israel rejects. The Israeli territory shall not include Jerusalem nor the former Palestinian Mandate (United Nations, The Question of Palestine 62). It is crucial to note that both the Palestinians and the Israelis have shown serious interest in the two-state solution since the mid-1970s. This interest has been proven by polls that consistently show that significant majorities of Palestinian and Israeli nationals favor a well-negotiated two-state deal (63).
Conclusion
In conclusion, the longstanding conflict between the Palestinians and Israelis is as a result of Palestinians’ desire to dominate the whole of Palestine and make the Israelis subservient and the remedy for the crisis is the two-state solution. The Palestinian-Israeli war has had a major impact on history, even earning the title the most intractable conflict of all times. It is, however, vital to understand that the key issues of contention such as mutual recognition, the control of Jerusalem, Palestinians’ freedom of return and movement, Israeli settlements, etc. can also be resolved quite easily without a war. Palestinians and the Jews need to agree rather than resort to fighting over such issues. The future, however, rests with the individual choices of every Israeli and Palestinian national.