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Arab-Israeli ConflictThe Oxford Encyclopedia of The Modern WorldEd. Peter N. Stearns. Vol. 1. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008. p182-191.Charles D. Smith

Arab-Israeli ConflictThe Palestine Mandate and Israel’s Independence

From the Creation of Israel to the 1967 War

The 1967 War to the Egyptian- Israeli   Peace Treaty

Camp David to the White House Lawn

The End of the Oslo Process

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

The Arab-Israeli conflict, which began with the proclamation of the State of Israel on 14

May 1948, was a direct outgrowth of the Palestinian question that arose after World War I.

These two conflicts, the Arab-Israeli and thePalestinian-Israeli, have frequently been

intertwined, and the question of the fate of the Palestinians has been a major factor in

Arab-Israeli tensions, although expressed in different ways according to the period

examined.The Palestine Mandate And Israel’s IndependenceIn the Balfour Declaration issued on 2 November 1917, Great Britain promised to create a

“national home” in Palestine for the Jewish people while preserving the “civil and religious

rights of the non-Jewish inhabitants,”Palestinian Arabs who at the time were 90 percent of

the population of Palestine. Postwar settlements and agreements divided Arab lands into

new entities and awarded Palestine and Iraq to the British as mandates, Syria and Lebanon

to the French. According to the covenant of the League of Nations, mandates were granted

on the condition that the mandatory power prepare the inhabitants of the region for future

self-government. However, because the Balfour Delaration was incorprated into the

Palestine Mandate, this condition was not upheld. The people to be prepared for self-

government and political rights were not the Palestinian Arabs but Jews, once, by

immigration, they had achieved a majority. The Palestine Mandate represented a triumph

for the Jewish national movement, Zionism, which had since the 1890s sought a Jewish

state to liberate European Jews from ongoing discrimination and anti-Semitism.

After the war, Arab states such as Egypt, Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon focused on their own

search for independence rather than on events in Palestine. This changed following

the Palestinian Arab revolt that erupted in 1936 and lasted to 1939 before being crushed

by British troops. The revolt began as a response to increased Zionist immigration to

Palestine from Europe following Adolf Hitler’s rise to power in Germany in 1933. Nazi

implementation of racist laws against Jews encouraged many German and Polish Jews to

leave; the Jewish population in Palestine tripled in four years. Although the Jewish

population never exceeded one-third of the total down to 1948, this sudden growth and the

ongoing expulsion of Arab peasants from lands bought by Jews aroused alarm. Further

unrest was fostered by a British investigatory commission chaired by Lord Peel. The Peel

Commission report in 1937 recommended partition of Palestine into a Jewish and an Arab

state. Both sides objected. The Zionists argued that 25 percent of Palestine was too little.

The Arabs were angered because that 25 percent contained land where half the population

were Arabs who would be transferred. In addition, the Palestinian state would be ruled not

by a Palestinian but by the ruler of Transjordan, Emir Abdullah.Page 183  |  Top of Article

The Peel report inspired the most violent phase of the revolt, and it was during this period

that Arab states first expressed serious concern about the fate of Palestine, pushed in part

by popular sentiment, well expressed by the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. The exception

to this Arab alarm was Abdullah of Transjordan, ruler of a principality that had been carved

out of the Palestine Mandate in 1921 (the Kingdom of Jordan was proclaimed in 1948).

Backed by British money and military aid, Abdullah sought to secure his rule through

cooperation with Zionism against anyPalestinian call for self-rule. This Zionist-Jordanian

mutuality of interests would last until the 1990s in the face of criticism from Arab heads of

state and many of Jordan’s citizens.

As World War II loomed in early 1939, the British reversed course over Palestine. Having

just crushed the Palestinianrevolt, Britain issued a white paper that froze Jewish land

purchases and limited immigration to fifteen thousand annually for five years (this was

extended throughout the war). Britain did so not to placate Palestinian Arabs but to placate

Arab sentiment in the surrounding countries so as to prevent uprisings against it while

faced with wartime needs elsewhere. Still, the white paper overturned the promises

inherent in the Balfour Declaration and the mandate. If fully implemented, it would have

granted Palestine independence in ten years as an Arab state with a Jewish minority.

Confronted with British cynicism, the Zionists resolved both to cooperate with Britain in

the war effort against Hitler and also to prepare to fight Britain once the war was over. At

the same time, the Zionist leadership chose to seek a new Great Power sponsor, the United

States. At war’s end, backed by knowledge of the horrors of the Holocaust, Zionists called

for creation of a Jewish state. President Harry S. Truman proved sympathetic to calls for

immediate immigration of European refugees against the wishes of British leaders, who

confronted Jewish rebellion and terrorist attacks against British personnel in Palestine.

Exhausted militarily and financially by World War II and dependent on American economic

and financial aid at a time when Truman’s policies backed Zionism, Great Britain handed

over responsibility for Palestine to the United Nations in February 1947. In November the

UN General Assembly voted to partition Palestine into a Jewish state and an Arab state—a

decision accepted by the Zionist leadership and rejected by the Palestinians. Fighting

quickly erupted between Zionist forces and Palestinians, aided by some Arabs from

surrounding countries. Zionist military superiority enabled Jewish forces to gain control of

the territory awarded them in the 1947 partition plan, resulting in the declaration

of Israeli independence on 14 May 1948.

An additional consequence of these wars was the creation of the Palestinian refugee

problem that exists to this day. Although some Palestinians fled in early 1948, most of the

750,000 Palestinians who became refugees were deliberately driven out of the area by

Zionist and then official Israeli military personnel as part of a plan to clear Palestine/Israel

of Arabs to make room for incoming Jewish immigrants.From The Creation Of Israel To The 1967 WarArab armies attacked Israel immediately following its declaration of independence, but the

Arab states were not united in their objectives. Most backed the creation of

a Palestinian state to be led by the former mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husayni, who

then lived in Egypt. Jordan opposed Palestinian self-determination, as did the Zionists, and

accepted the idea of partition, hoping to divide Palestine with the new State of Israel.

Jordan’s Arab Legion sought to retain already occupied territory and clashed

with Israeli forces only when challenged for control of the old city of Jerusalem, which the

Jordanians retained along with the West Bank. Jordan’s King Abdullah would be

assassinated in 1951 because of his negotiations with Zionists over the partition of

Palestine.

Israel emerged the victor. It had military superiority and was aided by the Arab states’ lack

of military coordination and political disarray. Israel and the combatant Arab states signed

armistice agreements between January and June 1949, but a state of war still existed, and

the Arab-Israeli conflict took shape.

Arab states refused to recognize Israel, which they regarded as an illegal entity. They

established economic boycotts, and Egypt forbade Israeli ships from transiting the Suez

Canal, although it often permitted passage of foreign ships destined for Israel. Between

1948 and 1956 tensions were strong, with frequent clashes between Israel and its

neighbors, Syria, Jordan, and Egypt. Most were instigated by Israel in retaliation for border

crossings by individual Palestinians who had lived in what was now Israel. This strife was

particularly intense along the Jordanian-Israelifrontier until 1955; Jordan was unable to

control its Palestinian refugees but was held responsible by Israel for their incursions.

During 1955, the focus of Arab-Israeli animosity shifted from the Jordanian front to the

Egyptian, influenced by rivalries among the Great Powers and the inauguration of Cold War

competition between the Soviet Union and the West for paramountcy in the region.

Washington Page 184  |  Top of Articleand London viewed Egypt as the potential linchpin of a

Middle Eastern alliance, but its military leaders, led by Gamal Abdel Nasser, who had taken

over in a coup in July 1952, espoused the doctrine of neutrality or non-alignment between

the Western and Eastern blocs.

In February 1955, Israel undertook a massive raid into Gaza that resulted in major

Egyptian casualties. The raid proved to be a landmark in the Arab-Israeli conflict within the

Cold War context. Concerned about Egyptian military weakness, Nasser signed an arms

pact with the Soviet Union in September 1955, causing Israel to seek more arms from its

supplier, France. Egypt also blockaded the Straits of Tiran, which offered access to the Gulf

of Aqaba and theIsraeli Red Sea port of Eilat. The ensuing tensions involved Britain and the

United States as well as France because of Anglo-American refusal in July 1956 to finance

the building of the Aswan Dam. Nasser retaliated for this act by nationalizing the Suez

Canal the same month. As a result, Britain, France, and Israel, for different reasons,

collaborated in an attack on Egypt in late October.

The Suez Crisis ended in political failure for France and Great Britain despite the military

defeat suffered by the Egyptians. Nasser’s reputation as a defender of Arab nationalism

was bolstered by his resistance against the attacks of European imperial powers allied with

Israel. The war brought Israel ten years of peace on its Egyptian frontier, with open

passage for Israeli shipping into the Gulf of Aqaba. United Nations Emergency Forces

(UNEF) were stationed in the Sinai to serve as buffers between Israel and Egypt. But

Israel’s prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, had only reluctantly withdrawn Israeli troops

from the Sinai, and Israel declared that any future Egyptian blockade of the Tiran Straits

would constitute a legitimate cause for war.

The Suez Crisis was the last Middle Eastern war in which former imperial powers sought to

retain an imperial presence. Henceforth the Arab-Israeli conflict involved only regional

forces, although the United States and the Soviets, along with European countries,

supplied Arab states and Israel with arms. The Suez Crisis also was the only Arab-

Israeli confrontation that did not involve the Palestinians directly or include

the Palestinian question as an issue to be considered in the war’s settlement.

In contrast to the causes of the Suez Crisis, the preliminaries to the 1967 Arab-Israeli War

(the Six-Day War) directly involved Palestinian factions, who served competing Arab state

interests and ideologies while seeking to define their own objectives. A major factor was

Egyptian-Syrian rivalry over the leadership of Arab nationalism.

In 1958, Egypt and Syria had merged to form the United Arab Republic (1958–1961), which

appeared to represent Pan-Arabism, an ideology calling for union of all Arab countries.

Egypt’s dominance of this partnership led Syria to secede and to impugn Nasser’s Arab

nationalist credentials by accusing him of evading any further confrontations with Israel.

The symbols of Nasser’s supposed evasion were the UNEF contingents stationed in the

Sinai. Syria especially referred to the UNEF forces because of increased Syrian-

Israeli tensions in 1963 over Syrian development of a water diversion system that Israel

attacked and destroyed.

Palestinians and the Palestinian question became embroiled in these inter-Arab disputes.

At an Arab League meeting in Cairo in January 1964 called to discuss Syrian-

Israeli clashes, Egypt’s Nasser sponsored the formation of the Palestine Liberation

Organization (PLO), to be based in Cairo, that would represent the Palestinian cause.

Egyptian backing for the PLO in propaganda and organizational efforts would defuse Syrian

charges that Egypt evaded the question of Israel and the Palestinians.

With Egypt linked to the PLO, Syria backed a small revolutionary group dedicated to the

destruction of Israel. This was Fatah, founded in 1959 in Kuwait by young Palestinians who

included Yasser Arafat. They hoped to create aPalestinian liberation movement

independent of Arab state control that would liberate all of former Palestine. They first

undertook raids into Israel in 1965, backed by Syria. Fatah raids, which frequently

originated from Jordan, not Syria, increased Arab-Israeli and inter-Arab tensions

throughout 1966 and into 1967, setting the antagonists on the path to war.

In May 1967, Israel warned Syria of possible retaliation, leading the Soviets to inform

Nasser that Israel was amassing troops on the Syrian border, information later judged to

be false. Nasser responded by sending Egyptian troops into the Sinai Peninsula on 14 May.

They ousted UNEF forces from Sharm al-Shaykh, which controlled the Straits of Tiran, and

reimposed a blockade of those straits to Israeli shipping. Egypt’s actions, motivated

primarily to demonstrate its primacy in Arab affairs against Syria, established the cause for

war that Israel had warned of following the 1956 Suez Crisis.

Israel attacked Egypt on 5 June 1967, after receiving information from Washington that

Egypt was not going to attack but was going to try to extricate itself from the Sinai with a

propaganda victory. Once Jordan and Syria entered the war, Israel erased the 1948

armistice lines separating them as well. The war resulted in Israel’s Page 185  |  Top of

Articleconquest and occupation of the Gaza Strip, the Sinai Peninsula, the West Bank, and

the Golan Heights. East Jerusalem, formerly under Jordanian control, was immediately

annexed to Israel with the declaration that a unified Jerusalem would remain the capital of

the Israeli state. Hundreds of thousands of West Bank and Gaza Palestinians now fell

under Israeli rule, including many who had settled there after fleeing or being evicted from

Palestine by Israeli troops in 1948.The 1967 War To The Egyptian-Israeli Peace TreatyThe consequences of the 1967 war have defined the parameters of negotiations to resolve

the Arab-Israeli conflict to the present. Israel declared that it would return territories in

exchange for full peace agreements, the extent of the lands involved left undefined. Arab

countries, meeting at Khartoum, Sudan, in August 1967, issued a document that called for

full Israeli withdrawal through diplomatic means but without entering into negotiations

with that country. It also insisted “on the rights of the Palestinian people in their own

country.”

Palestinian acceptance of peace meant in 1967 the regaining of pre-1967 Israel or former

Palestine. Their position was stated in the modified 1968 PLO charter, which referred to

the attainment of this goal by “armed struggle.”Palestinian groups and the PLO, with

Arafat as its head from 1969, constantly opposed international efforts to resolve the results

of the 1967 war unless the Palestinian political objective—self-determination—was

considered. This strategy involved the Palestinians in conflicts with Arab states as well as

with Israel and the United States as all sides sought to attain their own terms for resolving

the Arab-Israeli dilemma.

The focus of Palestinian opposition after the 1967 war was precisely the document that

became the basis of international diplomacy to resolve the results of the war, Security

Council Resolution 242 (SCR 242), passed by the United Nations in November 1967. Its

deliberate ambiguity led to conflicting interpretations at the Arab-Israeli state level, but

none at all for the Palestinians. Although condemning “the acquisition of territory by war”

and calling for all states “to live within secure and recognized boundaries,” SCR 242’s key

statement was its clause stating that Israel should withdraw “from territories occupied in

the recent conflict.” The exclusion of the article “the” before the word “territories” in this

clause, done at Israel’s insistence, ensured that Israel would not be required to withdraw

from all the territories it had occupied. Israel argued that the resolution’s statement that

all states should live “within secure and recognized boundaries” required that it retain

some territories acquired in the war in order to establish those secure boundaries. As for

the Palestinians, SCR 242 referred to them solely as refugees; resolution of this refugee

question would occur in the context of future Arab-Israeli state negotiations, where the

Palestinians would be excluded. As they had feared, the Palestinians were not considered

to be a people with legitimate political aspirations. From this time onward the PLO strove

to block any settlement that enshrined their refugee status, while subsequently working to

modify SCR 242 to permit Palestinian access to negotiations as a people with

acknowledged political rights.

In the aftermath of the 1967 war Arab states worked to recover lands taken by Israel in

that conflict by both military and diplomatic means. Their strategies differed according to

their perceptions of their interests. Egypt undertook a war of attrition along the Suez Canal

from 1968 to 1970. Although Israel was the victor militarily, its triumph was marred by

significant casualties and setbacks. Israel’s air superiority led it to attempt to cause

Nasser’s downfall by bombing targets inside Egypt, raids designed to humiliate and

discredit the Egyptian leader. Instead these attacks brought the Soviet Union more directly

into the Arab-Israeli conflict. Nearly fifteen thousand Soviet troops and pilots were shifted

to Egypt to bolster its defenses. This massive Soviet presence altered drastically the Cold

War equation in the Arab-Israeli conflict. It also encouraged the United States to support

United Nations efforts to institute a cease-fire between Israel and Egypt, achieved in

August 1970. This truce inspired a Palestinian-initiated crisis in Jordan that had major

ramifications.

Although Arafat now headed the PLO, he could not dominate that organization. He was

challenged by groups such as the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP),

headed by George Habash, and the Popular Democratic Front for the Liberation of

Palestine (PDFLP), led by Nayif Hawatmah. Both called for the overthrow of conservative

Arab regimes as a precondition for an assault on Israel, whereas Arafat and Fatah focused

on Israel and strove to distance the PLO from Arab state politics. Following the August

1970 Israeli-Egyptian cease-fire, the PFLP and PDFLP attempted to overthrow Jordan’s

King Hussein as the first step in creating a more radical Arab front that would challenge

Israel and simultaneously block any peace efforts based on the new cease-fire. This

decision led to the Jordanian civil war of September 1970, where Palestinian forces were

overwhelmed and a major Arab-Israelicrisis was barely averted.Page 186  |  Top of Article

The Palestinian-Jordanian clashes of August–September 1970 had a major impact on Arab

state involvement in the Arab-Israeli conflict. The Palestinian defeat forced the PLO to

move its command structure from Jordan to Lebanon in 1971. From that time onward, PLO

actions against Israel engaged Lebanon more directly in the Arab-Israeli conflict and

become a major factor in instigating a Lebanese civil war in the mid-1970s.

The Jordanian civil war had another casualty, Nasser of Egypt, who died shortly after

negotiating a cease-fire. He was succeeded by Anwar el-Sadat, who endeavored

unsuccessfully to gain American support for negotiations with Israel and Israeli withdrawal

from the Sinai Peninsula. Frustrated by this deadlock, Egypt and Syria began to plan in

early 1973 for an assault on Israel if no new diplomatic initiatives were forthcoming. With

arrangements well under way, further incentive arose when Israel decided in September to

annex a large area of the Sinai in defiance of SCR 242. Egypt and Syria attacked Israel on 6

October 1973, opening the 1973 Arab-Israeli War (the Yom Kippur War).Israeli forces fell

back in the Golan Heights but ultimately stopped the Syrians. Egyptian troops crossed the

Suez Canal and overwhelmed the Israeli defenses, advancing into the Sinai before being

checked. Initial Egyptian successes were thwarted by Israeli counterattacks that led

to Israeli forces crossing the canal and occupying its west bank. Technically Israel had won

the war against Egypt, but Egyptian forces held out in pockets in the Sinai against

fierce Israeli efforts to oust them and restore the status quo ante.

Whereas the 1967 war had completely overturned the political-military parameters of the

Arab-Israeli conflict that had existed since 1948, the 1973 war created the framework

within which resolution of the changes wrought by 1967 might be attained. The U.S.

secretary of state Henry Kissinger intervened in October 1973 to reach a cease-fire

between Israel and Egypt that left Egyptian forces in the Sinai, creating a situation that

required negotiations. Kissinger then initiated a step-by-step process that produced limited

agreements among Israel, Syria, and Egypt, involving minor withdrawals from lands

occupied by Israel. These, he hoped, would create a climate of confidence from which more

extensive agreements and possibly full peace treaties might ensue. Kissinger

negotiated Israelipullback accords with both Egypt and Syria during 1974, pursuant to

Security Council Resolution 338, passed on 22 October 1973, the last day of the war; it

called for full implementation of SCR 242.

Ever eager to pursue talks and to recover the Sinai, Sadat agreed to a second limited

agreement with Israel in September 1975 without coordinating his decision with Syria. To

Syria’s Hafiz al-Asad and other Arab leaders, this suggested Egypt’s willingness to seek a

separate agreement. Such a possibility had also occurred to Israeli politicians who were

primarily concerned with retaining the Golan Heights and the West Bank for Israel

regardless of the principles found in SCR 242. A separate peace with Egypt, from this

perspective, would not signify the first step toward a total resolution of the Arab-Israeli

conflict by diplomacy. It would mean that Egypt would be removed from the military

equation of the Arab-Israeli conflict, enabling Israel to concentrate its forces against Syria

and Jordan in order to impose its terms on them.

The American-sponsored peace efforts of 1974–1975 and Israeli lack of interest in any

agreement with Jordan over the West Bank had important repercussions for Palestinians

and the PLO within the framework of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Jordan’s King Hussein had

been humiliated by his exclusion from the pullback agreements of 1974. His inclusion

would have been the first step toward ultimate restoration of most of the West Bank to

Jordan, thereby undercutting PLO calls for Palestinian self-determination and PLO claims

to represent all Palestinians. Further humiliation awaited Hussein when Arab heads of

state met in Rabat, Morocco, in October 1974. There they recognized “the right of

the Palestinian people to establish an independent national authority under the command

of the Palestinian Liberation Organization, the sole legitimate representative of

the Palestinian people, in any Palestinianterritory that is liberated.” The Rabat Declaration

remains a landmark in the history of Palestinian efforts for self-determination within the

framework of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Its terms stipulated that Hussein and Jordan had no

right to represent Palestinian interests in any international forum, undercutting Jordanian

aspirations to recoup their 1967 losses. The Rabat Declaration acquired international

recognition when Arafat spoke at the United Nations General Assembly in November 1974

and the PLO was awarded observer status over the strong objections of Israel and the

United States.

Henceforth, advocates of a diplomatic resolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict were divided.

Most countries, including America’s European allies, called for inclusion of the PLO in any

negotiations based on SCR 242 and recognition ofPalestinian political rights as an issue for

consideration in any talks between Israel and its Arab neighbors. In contrast, the United

States and Israel rejected PLO Page 187  |  Top of Articleinclusion in talks, calling it a terrorist

organization. As for the PLO, it hoped to amend SCR 242 to include reference

to Palestinian self-determination.

The election of Jimmy Carter as U.S. president in November 1976 initiated a new approach

to the Arab-Israeli conflict. Carter abandoned Kissinger’s scheme of limited agreements

and hoped to gain a comprehensive Arab-Israeliaccord. In addition, he believed initially

that the Palestinian question had to be considered and that the PLO should be invited to an

international conference if it accepted SCR 242, a goal he was later forced to abandon,

along with hopes for a full international conference. In the end, the Camp David Agreement

of September 1978 between Egypt and Israel was a last-gasp effort to salvage something

out of Carter’s search for a comprehensive peace.

There were many reasons for Carter’s inability to achieve his broader objectives. Arab

leaders had no common policy agenda. Moreover, Israel’s opposition to negotiations

involving territory was now intransigent. Menachem Begin had succeeded Yitzhak Rabin as

prime minister in June 1977. As a pillar of Revisionist Zionism, Begin had proclaimed from

1948 to 1967 the need for Israel to invade and capture the West Bank (ancient Judea and

Samaria) to fulfill the Zionist goal of governing ancient Israel. As prime minister he sought

to reinterpret SCR 242 to apply only to the Sinai Peninsula and not to the Golan Heights or

to the West Bank, and he strongly opposed the inclusion of the Soviet Union, which had

cooperated with the Carter administration in seeking to bring Arab countries to the peace

table.

Carter’s capitulation on these issues led Sadat to seek a separate peace with Israel. Talks

between Sadat and Begin soon stalled, resuscitated at the last moment by Carter at the

Camp David talks. There Sadat insisted on full Israeliwithdrawal from the Sinai and

reference in any accord to the future status and political rights of the Palestinians. Begin

initially strove to retain land and air bases in the Sinai and categorically refused to agree to

any reference to Palestinians as having political claims. In the agreement hammered out in

September 1978, Begin agreed to mention of the “legitimate rights of

the Palestinian people,” interpreting these words to refer only to nonpolitical rights of the

Palestinians living under Israeli occupation. Carter and Sadat assumed that this phrase

referred to the PLO and political rights as well. Beyond this, major disputes arose over the

procedures outlined for negotiating the autonomy of the West Bank and Gaza. Sadat and

Carter assumed that Begin had committed Israel to refrain from creating new settlements

in the territories during the period required to negotiate such autonomy, possibly five

years. Begin insisted that he had not committed Israel to any restrictions on settlements

beyond a three-month span; according to William Quandt, “for Begin, Sinai had been

sacrificed but Eretz Israel had been won,” referring to the greater Israel that included the

West Bank (Camp David, p. 256).

The most tangible result of the Camp David accord was the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty of

March 1979, the first between an Arab state and Israel and, consequently, a milestone in

the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict. But the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty did not suggest

any progress toward resolution of the broader conflict by further negotiation. Other Arab

states censured Egypt, removing it from the Arab League, whose headquarters were

transferred from Cairo to Tunis. From the broader Arab perspective, censure seemed

justified by the official Israeliinterpretation of the agreements: consolidation of Israel’s hold

over the other occupied territories and greater Israelimilitary freedom to confront Arab

opposition and impose its will. For Begin the task now was to establish firmer control over

the West Bank and to prove to the 1 million Palestinians living there that they had no hope

of true self-determination.Camp David To The White House LawnIsraeli Likud efforts to retain the Palestinian territories and the Golan Heights now

intensified. Begin annexed the Golan to Israel in 1981, and he and his chief cabinet ally,

Ariel Sharon, greatly expanded settlements in Gaza and the West Bank. These efforts were

tolerated during Ronald Reagan’s presidency (1981–1989), which saw the United States

committed to a stark Cold War perspective where Israel was seen as a vital ally against the

Soviets. As a result, American protests against Israeli settlement policy were muted until

the outbreak of the Palestinian Intifada in December 1987.

The roots of these developments can be found in PLO circumstances in the aftermath of

Camp David and the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty, when the PLO intensified attacks on

Israel from Lebanon. The shift of the PLO command structure to camps outside Beirut after

1971 had exacerbated the tense relationship between the Palestinians and Lebanon’s

government and led to the formation of Maronite Catholic militias determined to thwart

PLO assaults. PLO factions also found themselves involved in local disputes when Muslim

and leftist resentment at Maronite dominance spilled over into civil war in the mid-1970s.

Once a truce was achieved in Lebanon, the PLO resumed its assaults against Israel.Page 188  |  Top of Article

Israel had invaded southern Lebanon in retaliation for a terrorist attack in March 1978 and

then withdrew. In the wake of Camp David and the 1979 Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty,

Begin and Sharon reconsidered their strategy regarding the PLO in light of their

determination to ensure Israeli domination of the West Bank. They believed that

destruction of the PLO command in Lebanon would both relieve Israel of border strife and

remove any hope among West Bank Palestinians that they could escape or

resist Israeli rule. Israeli ambitions meshed with those of Bashir Gemayel, leader of the

Phalange, the premier Maronite militia. He hoped to oust if not destroy the PLO in Lebanon

in order to remove a major challenge to Maronite preeminence. An alliance with Israel,

which had trained Maronite militias since the mid-1970s, would place Gemayel in power

and ensure Maronite political control of Lebanon despite its minority status.

These calculations resulted in an Israeli invasion of Lebanon in June 1982. International

intervention resulted in the PLO agreeing to leave Lebanon for Tunisia in August, with

guarantees that the Palestinians who remained would be protected. Once the PLO left

Lebanon, American military contingents were withdrawn. Almost simultaneously, Bashir

Gemayel was assassinated. As a result the Israeli army permitted Maronite Phalangists to

enter the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps, where nearly a thousand Palestinians were

slaughtered.

The massacres in the camps brought the return of American forces. Intended to be a

neutral presence, American troops became increasingly endangered when Israel pulled its

troops out of the Shouf Mountains, a Druze stronghold, exposing the Americans to

harassment by groups opposing the Maronite government that the Reagan administration

favored. When Reagan officials called for naval bombardments of Druze positions, over the

strong objections of the marine commander in Beirut, opposition forces retaliated with the

suicide bombing of the marine barracks in October 1983, causing 241 deaths. After a

further show of force, Reagan ordered the withdrawal of American troops in February

1984, leaving Lebanon to its regional competitors.

The Lebanese-Israeli frontier remained a zone of conflict. One of the major consequences of

the Israeli invasion had been the Iranian creation of Hezbollah, a Lebanese Shiite military

force dedicated to confronting Israeli forces and driving them from Lebanon. Ultimately

Israel created a security zone in southern Lebanon where its troops and those of its

Lebanese Christian allies sought to protect Israel’s northern border. Ongoing clashes with

Hezbollah and increasingly unacceptable Israeli casualties would result in the total

withdrawal of these troops from south Lebanon in 2000. The 1982 Israeli invasion of

Lebanon proved in retrospect to be an undertaking whose short-term triumphs masked

long-term liabilities, in particular the incitement of Lebanese Shiite hostility toward Israel.

No major change in the diplomacy of the Arab-Israeli conflict occurred until December

1988, when the United States finally agreed to talk to the PLO, declaring that it had

satisfactorily renounced terrorism and accepted Security Council Resolution 242.

The American decision, which proved to be a major stepping-stone toward resolution of

issues within the framework of the broader Arab-Israeli conflict, was inspired by the

actions of Palestinians on the West Bank and especially in the Gaza Strip who had rebelled

against Israeli occupation. The Intifada contradicted the basic assumptions

behindIsraeli policy since the Camp David accord and the 1982 invasion of Lebanon—

namely, that with the PLO in disarray if not vanquished, Israel could act with impunity to

impose its will on the Palestinians in the territories. In addition, the Intifada gave

legitimacy, if only indirectly, to PLO claims to represent the Palestinians. But American

agreement to discuss matters with Arafat did not mean a willingness to negotiate with him.

Matters remained stalemated, with Likud, guided by Yitzhak Shamir, ever more determined

to resist pressures to compromise.

The catalyst for a breakthrough toward resolution of Arab-Israeli matters was the Iraqi

president Saddam Hussein’s decision to invade Kuwait in August 1990 and the

counterdecision of President George H. W. Bush that the United States would forge a

military coalition that included Arab armies to drive Iraqi forces out of that country.

Washington thus promised Syria and Egypt that in return for their inclusion in the coalition

against Hussein, the Bush administration would renew the Arab-Israeli negotiating process

after the war.

In the aftermath of the Gulf War, an international conference in Madrid was convened in

October 1991. The Arab states represented were Syria, Jordan, and Lebanon. In addition,

the Palestinians were for the first time permitted to attend such a conference, although the

PLO was excluded and the Palestinian delegation was, officially, part of the Jordanian

contingent. The Madrid talks, which included several rounds of negotiations from October

1991 to the summer of 1993, were a landmark in the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict in

that Arab states and Israel negotiated directly for the first time, as did Israelis and

Palestinians. Although no formal agreements emerged during the span of these talks, their

atmosphere introduced Page 189  |  Top of Articlemomentum and incentives for further

discussions, stymied primarily by the intransigence of Yitzhak Shamir’s Likud cabinet in

Israel. Further progress awaited Israeli elections in June 1992 that made Yitzhak Rabin

prime minister.

Rabin’s promises to address the Palestinian question were inspired primarily by the

increasing violence in the occupied territories, as Islamic groups such as Islamic Jihad and

Hamas took the lead in resisting Israeli occupation. Aware that Arafat backed compromise,

Rabin and his foreign minister, Shimon Peres, saw him as a useful alternative to the

Islamist factions that called for reclamation of all of former Palestine, meaning the

eradication of Israel. Secret talks in Oslo, Norway, led to the historic events of August–

September 1993, when the PLO and Israel signed letters of mutual recognition and agreed

to negotiate the status of the territories (Oslo I). However, although the PLO recognized

Israel’s right to exist as a sovereign state, Israel in return recognized the PLO as the

representative of thePalestinian people but made no mention of a Palestinian state.

Despite this imbalance, the accord appeared to be a turning point in the history of the

Arab-Israeli conflict. For the first time a settlement of the Palestinian question involving the

(undefined) political rights of the Palestinians was acknowledged to be part of the

resolution of the conflict. As part of the initial accord, the Palestinians were to be granted

self-governing authority in most of the Gaza Strip and in Jericho on the West Bank. Israel

and the PLO established a timetable for negotiations intended to provide for Israeli troop

withdrawals from other areas on the West Bank that would be handed over

to Palestinian authority. Once a Palestinian Interim Self-Governing Authority was

established with an elected Palestinian Council, most requisites defined for the interim

stage of the accord would be completed. At that point negotiations were supposed to begin

on the final stage, which included delicate issues deliberately omitted from the initial

accord as too difficult to resolve; these included the status of Jerusalem, the fate

of Israeli settlements in the territories, and resolution of the Palestinian refugee problem.The End Of The Oslo ProcessThe Israeli-Palestinian accord had significance beyond the scope of Israeli-

Palestinian relations. It legitimized Jordan’s right to reach its own peace treaty with Israel,

long a goal of King Hussein. The treaty, signed in October 1994, created within a few

months more normalization of relations than that achieved in the sixteen years spanned by

Israel’s treaty with Egypt. As for Syria, talks were undertaken over the future of the Golan

Heights with a peace treaty the final goal, but an impasse resulted. Syria wanted

assurances that there would be a full Israeli withdrawal in return for any treaty. Israel

sought to negotiate security arrangements without committing itself to a full withdrawal.

No agreement has been reached.

   Arab-Israeli Conflict. A Palestinian refugee

and her daughter in Beirut, Lebanon, January 1992. Photograph by Antonin Kratochvil.AP PHOTO/ANTONIN

KRATOCHVIL/VII Page 190  |  Top of Article

With respect to Israel and the PLO, the implementation of the interim agreements

stemming from the 1993 accord involved tortuous negotiations as Israel strove to hold on

to as much authority as possible. While the PLO envisioned a Palestinian state as the

ultimate outcome of the accord, Rabin envisioned a far more limited arrangement and

repeatedly rejected the idea of a Palestinian state. Moreover, the atmosphere of

negotiations was severely affected by the extraordinary violence that erupted following the

1993 agreement. Groups on both sides opposed the pact because it rejected maximalist

goals. Major acts of violence included the massacre of twenty-nine Palestinians by

an Israelisettler in Hebron and a retaliatory suicide bombing by Hamas, the first of many

that would occur in the future.

Despite the carnage, talks continued and led to the Oslo II accord of October 1995 that

referred to items initially set aside to the final stage—Jerusalem, the settlements, and the

refugees—even though the interim stage had not yet been implemented. There were three

major reasons for these developments. First, both parties wished to speed up talks to show

progress and mute Palestinian violence and despair. Second, Rabin needed to establish a

record of accomplishment that could not be overturned if Likud came to power in future

elections. Finally, Arafat did crack down on the Palestinian extremists, and the political

factions in Hamas appeared amenable to a compromise.

It was precisely this confluence of factors that led to the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin in

November 1995 by anIsraeli student of orthodox beliefs, militantly opposed to territorial

compromise. Where initial lack of progress had sustained Palestinian anger at Arafat’s

apparent inability to gain his goals, his later success and Israeli willingness to reach

agreement on more withdrawals from land inflamed Israeli opponents of the accord.

Rabin’s successor, Shimon Peres, implemented some of Oslo II’s terms, leading to the

creation of the Palestinian Authority in January 1996. But he also ordered his intelligence

service to assassinate a member of Hamas identified as the mastermind behind previous

bombings. This killing in January 1996 ended a tacit six-month truce between Hamas and

Israel and resulted in several Palestinian suicide bomb assaults in Israel that caused over

sixty deaths and undermined Peres’s leadership.

In June 1996 elections the Likud candidate Binyamin Netanyahu won by 1 percent of the

vote. He immediately sought to undermine the Oslo process, encouraged by American

Likud sympathizers who wrote a policy paper (“Clean Break”) for him in June 1996,

authored by Richard Perle and Douglas Feith, that called for Israel to abandon the Oslo

process. Netanyahu’s efforts proved ultimately unsuccessful, but settlement expansion

continued under his leadership and would actually increase under his successor in 1999,

the Labor candidate Ehud Barak, despite Barak’s call for peace talks with the Palestinians.

Barak entered these talks, known as the Camp David negotiations of July 2000, after

initially pursuing and then withdrawing from a potential settlement with Syria. The Camp

David talks have been the subject of much controversy, with the U.S. president Bill Clinton

joining Barak in claiming that the Palestinian Authority chairman Yasser Arafat bore full

responsibility for their failure. Subsequent studies provide a different picture, indicating

that all parties were to blame and that Barak never actually made official Israeli offers,

using Clinton to present proposals as American ideas. In the ensuing acrimony, Ariel

Sharon, who had campaigned against the peace talks, incited a second and more violent

Intifada by staging a visit to the Temple Mount or Haram al-Sharif area to gain political

support against Barak in upcoming elections.

The second Intifada’s violence intensified with the elections of George W. Bush as U.S.

president in November 2000 and of Ariel Sharon as prime minister of Israel in February

2001. Sharon redoubled Israeli attempts to suppress the violence with Bush’s

acquiescence, especially after the al-Qaeda attacks on the United States of 11 September

2001. From that point onward, Bush subcontracted American policy on the Palestinian-

Israeli conflict to Israel while his administration focused its attention on arguing and

preparing for an attack on Iraq, encouraged by Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, and other

signers of “Clean Break,” many highly placed in Bush’s administration. As a result, Arab

state proposals for full-fledged peace talks in 2002 were ignored by the United States and

by Israel. Both Saudi Arabia and the Arab League made offers that included full recognition

of Israel by all Arab states but required Israel’s withdrawal from the West Bank to make

way for a Palestinian state. Syria made two offers in 2003–2004 for talks with Israel that

were also rebuffed.

As of late 2007 it appeared that the nature of the Arab-Israel state confrontation had

reversed from the conditions found after 1948. Whereas that conflict had been initially

defined by open Arab hostility toward Israel, the years following the 1967 war saw an

Egyptian-Israeli peace in 1979 and a similar pact between Israel and Jordan in 1994. Since

then there have been several Arab proposals for full peace. In contrast, Israel, having

initially declared its willingness for negotiations, before and after the 1967 war, Page 191  |

Top of Articlenow appears intent on consolidating its hold over the West Bank in lieu of an

Arab-Israeli peace and regardless of population imbalances between the 1.5

million PalestinianArab residents and the Israeli settlers, who numbered over 240,000 by

2007.

Given these conditions, along with growing evidence of the failure of America’s Iraq

venture, several Arab heads of state, all Sunni Muslims, have warned of the possibility of

major Shiite-Sunni strife in the future that would be intensified by the failure to resolve

the Palestinian-Israeli dilemma. Jordan’s King Abdullah II has declared that continuation of

the latter conflict could mean the expansion of tensions beyond the Middle East to the

broader Muslim world, with the confrontation defined in religious terms between Islam and

the West. There is also evidence of growing European unease at American reluctance to

engage all parties to the conflict, including Hamas, which won Palestinian elections held in

January 2006.

Hamas’s election indicated widespread Palestinian disillusionment with the leadership of

the Palestinian Authority, which the population views as forced to comply with American-

Israeli strictures while tolerating ongoing expansion of Israeli settlements. Whether the

circumstances surrounding this conflict or the nature of Arab state relations with Israel will

change or remain stalemated is unclear. If the latter, then the intensification of

the conflict beyond previously known parameters would appear increasingly likely in the

years ahead.

[See also Arabs and the Arab World ; Camp David Accords ; Israel ; Law of Return ; Marine

Barracks Bombing ;Middle East ; Oslo Agreement ; Palestine ; Palestine Liberation

Organization ; and Palestinian   Refugees  .]BIBLIOGRAPHYAbu-Amr, Ziad. Islamic Fundamentalism in the West Bank and Gaza. Bloomington: Indiana

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CHARLES D. SMITHSource Citation   (MLA 7th Edition) 

Smith, Charles D. "Arab-Israeli Conflict." The Oxford Encyclopedia of The Modern World. Ed. Peter N. Stearns. Vol. 1. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008. 182-191. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 4 Oct. 2012.

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