Israel & Palestine

One land…two peoples

THE MIDDLE EAST

THE MIDDLE EAST

THE MIDDLE EAST

The Jewish claim…

The Jewish Torah (the Old Testament)…

….appx. 15th Century B.C.E. “Unto thy seed

have I given this land, from the river of Egypt unto the great river Euphrates”(Genesis 15:18)

“For I will cast out the nations before thee, and enlarge thy borders” (Exodus 34:24)

The Jewish claim…

King Solomon builds first Jewish temple in Jerusalem…950 B.C.E.

King David conquers Jerusalem in 1,000 B.C.E. …becomes capitol of first Jewish kingdom

Jewish Temple

The Jewish people are conquered and exiled by the

BABYLONIANS in 597 B.C.E., but soon return to live under the

rule of…

…the Persians…Islamic Caliphates…the Turks…the Ottoman Empire…and the British

…the Persians…Alexander the Great…the Romans…the Byzantines…

The Palestinian claim…

Arab peoples began moving into what is now Israel by at least the 4th century B.C.E. …

The Dome of the Rock and Al Aqsa Mosque constructed in 7th/8th centuries C.E.

Mohamed’s descendants conquered Jerusalem in 638 C.E. …

Dome ofthe Rock/Al Quds

Al Aqsa Mosque

Historic Palestine refers to a small area between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, which includes Jerusalem. Despite fundamental religious, linguistic, and cultural differences, Arabs and Jews lived there in relative peace for hundreds of years.

When Hitler and the Nazis came to power in Germany in the 1930s, nearly quarter of a million European Jews moved to Palestine, then under British jurisdiction.

As World War II was drawing to a close, many Jews grew tired of the British administration in Palestine. One group, led by future Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin, carried out a series of terrorist acts against British interests, the most notorious of which was the 1946 bombing of the King David hotel in Jerusalem.

A year later, Britain asked the United Nations (UN) to resolve the Palestinian problem, which had grown even more explosive after the massive influx of Jews that followed World War II.

In 1947, the UN voted to partition Palestine into Jewish and Arab sectors, leaving Jerusalem as an international city, neither wholly Jewish nor wholly Arab.

The Jews accepted the terms of the resolution, but the Arabs rejected them. They were outraged that the Jews, who at the time comprised only a third of the Palestinian population, should be awarded more than half the land.

After the UN resolution passed, Jewish and Arab forces in Palestine went to war. The Jews drove the Arabs out of most of the areas allocated for the Jewish state and a few allocated for the Arab state, notably the west part of Jerusalem.

After the armistice agreements, Israel ended up with 78 percent of historic Palestine, leaving Egypt and Jordan to take control of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. These two Arab states received most of the 700,000 Palestinian Arabs who had fled their homes during the fighting.

In 1967, with tensions between the Israelis and their neighbors escalating, Israel launched a surprise attack against the Arab armies gathering on its borders. The war lasted only six days, but at the end of it Israel owned or controlled all of what was once Palestine, including Gaza and the West Bank.

Demoralized by the decisiveness of the Israeli victory, some Palestinian Arabs joined the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). The PLO, which was chaired by Yasser Arafat, rejected Jewish claims to any of historic Palestine and called on Arabs to wage an “armed struggle.”

Outside the Arab world, “armed struggle” was widely viewed as a euphemism for terrorism. The PLO, or groups affiliated with it, carried out a series of terrorist acts in the early 1970s, including the murder of 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich.

There was a momentary thaw in 1978, when U.S. president Jimmy Carter brokered successful negotiations between Egyptian president Anwar Sadat and Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin. In exchange for Egyptian recognition of the Jewish state, Israel returned land under Israeli occupation to Egypt.

But any positive momentum generated by the agreement was soon disrupted: Egypt was quickly ostracized by the other Arab states, President Sadat was assassinated in 1981, and an Arab intifada—or uprising against the Israeli occupation in Gaza and the West Bank—broke out in 1987.

More than 1,200 people (the vast majority Palestinians) died during the intifada, which raged until 1993, when Israeli and Palestinian negotiators met secretly in Oslo to discuss the terms of a peace agreement.

HAMAS

Supported by Iran

On June 25, 2006, Hamas militants captured an Israeli soldier in Gaza, prompting Israel to bomb strategic targets in Gaza, killing many civilians, and to arrest several Hamas politicians.

HezbollahSupported by Iran

Then, on July 12, the sequence repeated itself in Lebanon, as Hezbollah (another pro-Palestinian group responsible for numerous terrorist acts against Israel) captured two more Israeli soldiers. Israel responded to this second provocation by declaring war on Hezbollah and its leader, Hassan Nasrallah.

A massive air assault on strategic parts of Lebanon’s infrastructure disabled some of Hezbollah’s weapons and killed a contested number of militants. But the main victims of the Israeli attacks were Lebanese civilians, whose suffering was shown nightly on televisions around the world.

West Bank –Jewish

Settlements

Palestinian Diaspora

Jerusalem

The unwillingness of the Israeli government to completely freeze its settlement activity and the Palestinian government’s refusal to enter peace talks with Israel until it does so are just two of the many hurdles that must be overcome on the road to peace. Israel’s massive separation barrier encircling the West Bank provides a powerful physical reminder of all that divides the Israelis and Palestinians.