The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Explained in 5 Minutes

So what exactly is going on between the Israelis and Palestinians? I went to multiple non-partisan sites to gather information and turn it into a 5 minute summary. Not easy when this has been going on for thousands of years! But I’ll give it a try.

In 66 CE, the Jews of Judea rose in revolt against Rome, naming their new state as “Israel“.  From 115 to 117 Jews in Libya, Egypt, Cyprus and Mesopotamia fought against Rome. Wars went against the Romans and in 131 the area was renamed Palaestina. The fighting went on for another couple hundred years and in the early 4th century the area was Christian and Jews were banned from living there. The Roman Empire split in 390 AD and the region became part of the (Christian) East Roman Empire, known as the Byzantine Empire.  For the next 300 years or so the Jews were without a real homeland, were constantly in battles and being killed in constant wars. In the 7th century the area was conquered by the Arab Muslim Empires, and over the next 600 years it gradually became predominantly Muslim by around 1200 AD. It was known as the “Ottoman Empire” during this period until the British conquest in 1917. Thus the Jews essentially not having a homeland for over nearly 2000 years!

The term “Zionism” was coined in 1890 by Nathan Birnbaum. It’s general definition means the national movement for the return of the Jewish people to their homeland and the resumption of Jewish sovereignty in the Land of Israel.  During World War I, the British government publicly committed to create a Jewish National Home and was granted a Mandate to rule Palestine by the League of Nations . A rival Arab nationalism also claimed rights over the former Ottoman territories and sought to prevent Jewish migration into Palestine. Then came World War II and the Holocaust and in 1947 the United Nations adopted Resolution 181, known as the Partition Plan, which sought to divide the British Mandate of Palestine into Arab and Jewish states. On May 14, 1948, the State of Israel was created, sparking the first Arab-Israeli War. The war ended in 1949 with Israel’s victory, but 750,000 Palestinians were displaced and the territory was divided into 3 parts: the State of Israel, the West Bank (of the Jordan River), and the Gaza Strip. Over the following years tensions rose particularly between Israel and Egypt, Jordan, and Syria. 

 In June, 1967 after some provocative moves by Egypt’s Nasser, Israel preemptively attacked Egyptian and Syrian air forces, starting the Six-Day War. After the war, Israel gained territorial control over the Sinai Peninsula and Gaza Strip from Egypt; the West Bank and East Jerusalem from Jordan; and the Golan Heights from Syria. Six years later, in what is referred to as the Yom Kippur War or the October War, Egypt and Syria launched a surprise two-front attack on Israel to regain their lost territory; the conflict did not result in significant gains for Egypt, Israel, or Syria. Finally, in 1979, following a series of cease-fires and peace negotiations, representatives from Egypt and Israel signed the Camp David Accords, a peace treaty that ended the thirty-year conflict between Egypt and Israel. But the question of Palestinian self-determination and self-government was not solved.

In 1987, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza Strip rose up against the Israeli government in what is known as the first intifada. In 1993 and 1995 The Oslo Accords I and II  mediated the conflict, setting up a framework for the Palestinians to govern themselves in the West Bank and Gaza. In the agreements were provisions that mandated the complete withdrawal of Israel from 6 cities and 450 towns in the West Bank. In September 2000, Palestinians launched the second intifada, which would last until 2005. In response, the Israeli government approved construction of a barrier wall around the West Bank in 2002, despite opposition from the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court. 

In 2013, the Palestinian ruling faction was known as “Fatah”. “Hamas”, a spin-off from the Muslim Brotherhood, was the rival faction. In 2014 they joined together. Hamas had been designated as a terrorist organization by the United States in 1997. Over the subsequent years there have been continual clashes. In 2014 Hamas fired nearly 3000 missiles into Israel. Since that time the fighting and missile launching have been nearly continuous.

So where does the conflict stand today? In October 2020, an Israeli court ruled that several Palestinian families living in Sheikh Jarrah—a neighborhood in East Jerusalem—were to be evicted by May 2021 with their land given to Jewish families. This was followed by demonstrations and an attempt to settle the issue in the courts. On May 10, after several consecutive days of violence in the demonstrations, Hamas, the militant group which governs Gaza, and other Palestinian militant groups launched hundreds of rockets into Israeli territory. Israel responded with air strikes and artillery bombardments against targets in Gaza that were initially Hamas buildings, tunnels, rocket launchers and infrastructure. This has apparently escalated to include residential buildings, media headquarters, and refugee and healthcare facilities.

In recent days there is apparently a fragile “cease-fire” agreement in place after international demands. I’m not going to get into who’s right and who’s wrong in this article or whether the U.S. should be involved. The world is a mess right now and I have no faith in the current administration to have ANY ability to display leadership in the Middle East. The Jews and Israel have had a long and turbulent history. My sympathies are with the simple innocent people who are being killed on both sides. As I often say…..The Truth Lies Somewhere In The Middle. May Peace be with you.