The Middle East: Origin of Conflict

Arab-Israeli conflict

This conflict is a struggle between the Jewish state of Israel and the Arabs of the Middle East. It has continued for many decades and there has been no peaceful solution so far.
Many religions look upon the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea as their homeland. This historic land is called Palestine. BC, the Jews also lived there. But later on, the Romans invaded the area and made it Christian. The Jews were driven away and had to live in other parts of the world. Muslims also think of Palestine as a holy place.

In the Middle Ages, the land was ruled by the Turks of the Ottoman Empire and more Arabs came to Palestine. In the middle of the 19th century, Jews started to think about coming back to Palestine. This idea was called Zionism and then by the beginning of the 20th century, more and more Jews came back to Palestine and started a new life. At the end of WWI, the Turks were defeated and Great Britain ruled Palestine. The British helped the Jews and wanted to create a new country for them. During WWII, about 6 million Jews were murdered by German Nazis in the Holocaust. Those who survived had no place to go.

In 1947, the United Nations decided to divide Palestine into two states: Israel for the Jews and Palestine for the Arabs. The Jews accepted the plan but the Arabs didn't want the Jews to take over their country.
When the British left Palestine, Israel declared its independence. At once, Arab countries to attack the new state but Israel fought back and won. It also expanded its territory and occupied more land than the UN gave it. Other Arabs countries took over the Arab part of Palestine. Over 700,000 Palestinians became REFUGEES and later most of them fled to Israel's neighbors.

Since the war of 1948, Israel has had to fight 3 more wars against its Arab neighbors. In 1956 Egypt took control of the Suez Canal from Great Britain and France. Together with Israel, these two countries attacked Egypt and then Israel took control of the Sinai Peninsula. In May, the president of Egypt prepared another attack on Israel. He closed Israel's only route to the sea and soldiers from all the Arab countries marched to Israel's border. However, Israel attacked first and surprised its enemies. In a war that lasted only six days, Israel defeated the Arabs and took over some of their land. In 1973 the fourth and last war: Israel defeated the Arabs once again. But in the late 1970s Egypt saw that it couldn't win a war against Israel, so it became the first Arab country to make peace with the Jewish state.

In 1982 Israel invaded Lebanon, its northern neighbor. An organization called the PLO that fought for the rights of the Palestinians, continued to attack Israel from southern Lebanon. But that didn't last, at the beginning of the 1990s, the PLO realized that its only hope was to make peace with Israel. In 1933 an agreement was signed between the PLO and Israel. The PLO recognized Israel's right to exist and Israel promised to give back some of the land that it took away. It also agreed to talks on a Palestinian state. By the end of the century, more and more land was given back to the Palestinians and they also set up their government in these areas. But when the peace talks slowed down in 2000, the second Intifada began. Palestinian suicide bombers started blowing themselves up in Israeli towns and killing many Israelis. In return, Israel's army took control of most parts of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.
Today, lasting peace is farther away than ever before, because there are extremists on both sides who don't want to live together peacefully.