Israel and Palestine

Israel and Palestine

The Arab-Israel conflict is a story which has taken place over a century. In order to understand the conflict between these two cultures their collective histories must be taken into consideration. It was a long and hard path for the Jewish population to get a piece of land they can call their own. A land free of religious persecution. I think that history has shown that these two states can not and will not be able to sustain peace over any period of time.

The story between these two countries starts shortly after the First World War. The defeat of the Ottoman Empire caused the League of Nations to split up their existing territories. Palestine happened to be one of the affected territories. The British and the French saw this as an opportunity to expand their empires (Origins). The United States under the presidency of Harry S. Truman stated that the land acquired after the war would eventually be granted their independence (Victor 169). The pro-Zionist movement was concerned in the development and support of a Jewish national homeland (Dictionary). With this new land a pro-Zionist movement led by Dr. Hiam Weizmann came up with the Balfour declaration, which stated that there was to be the creation of a Jewish national home inside Palestine (Brief). The Palestinians obviously opposed this idea because it would take away land from their country. The reasons that the Jews wanted this land so much was because this was the birthplace of the Jews, this is where they formed their national and religious identity, and here they wrote and gave the Bible to the rest of the world (Concise 113). Eventually this plan was adopted without taking into consideration the existing inhabitants. Shortly after this declaration Arab nationalists started riots opposing the Jewish presence in many of their cities for example: Jerusalem, Haifa, and Hebron (Brief).

These Arab riots caused problems for the unprepared British Army. Hundreds of Jews were killed during these riots which were financed by Nazi Germany (Bard 23). In order to fight back the Jews created their own underground militia which bombed Palestinian civilians and practiced methods of terrorism. In order to stop the violence and the rioting Britain came up with the idea of separating these two ethnic groups by creating a small Jewish state and a larger Arab state. The Arabs...

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...estinians. The indigenous Arab population of Palestine has been systematically discriminated against since the Balfour Declaration in 1917, which created Israel for the Jews at the expense of a native population, which has been denied its own nationhood and become dispossessed, marginalized people (Beginners).”

With all of this being said I think that the two states will not be able to sustain peace in the area given their history. Palestinians will never fully accept a Jewish state because the land they live on was “taken” from them after the World Wars. As long as there are terrorist organizations that have their extremist views there will never be peace in the Middle East.

Works Cited

Israeli 1972 Olympic Team Murdered in Munich.

PalestineFacts.org. 18 Apr. 2005

Victor, Barbara. A Voice of Reason. New York: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1994.

Cohn-Sherbok, Dan, and Dawoud El-Alami. The Palestine - Israeli Conflict. Oxford: Oneworld, 2002.

Bickerton, Ian J., and Carla L. Klausner. A Concise History of the Arab-Israeli Conflict. Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall, 2002.

Bard, Mitchell G. Myths and Facts . N.p.: American Israeli Cooperative Enterprise, 2002.