A short history

Although this only covers the last hundred years of the region, the story is pretty clear.

A short history of the Arab-Israeli conflict Explaining the complex crisis in maps The Economist

Oct 18th 2023

How have Israel’s borders changed over time? And why did Palestinian autonomous territories end up scattered in two separate regions? The shifting lines on the map help to explain more than a century of conflict between Arabs and Jews in the Holy Land.

During the first world war Sir Mark Sykes, a British diplomat, and François Georges- Picot, a French one, were appointed by their governments to secretly divvy up the lands of the Ottoman empire. The Arab provinces were to be split up among European powers. Palestine was envisioned as international territory given its significance in Christianity, Islam and Judaism. In 1917 Britain issued the Balfour Declaration, stating its support for “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people”. By then Jewish agricultural settlement in Palestine had already begun, and the Zionist movement, founded by Theodor Herzl, had declared its aim to create a Jewish homeland at its first congress in Basel in 1897.

PALESTINE BRITISH MANDATE 1920 The San Remo Conference of 1920 finalised the partition of the Ottoman empire. Britain was given a mandate to rule parts of the international territory envisioned under Sykes-Picot. This was split again the following year into Palestine and Transjordan, an Arab kingdom under Hashemite rule. The mandate was approved by the League of Nations, a forerunner to the United Nations, in 1922. Importantly, it included support for the Balfour Declaration. Arabs living there turned increasingly to violence against their occupiers and growing numbers of Jewish migrants, including German Jews fleeing Nazi persecution. In 1936 the Arabs revolted. The British crushed the uprising, but tried to win over the Arabs by restricting Jewish ambitions in the region. Jewish militant groups began launching their own revolt which spread after the second world war. Eventually the British gave up and handed the problem over to the UN. After the Holocaust, pressure grew for the international recognition of a Jewish state. In 1947 the UN proposed the partition of Palestine into three parts: an Arab state, a Jewish state and Jerusalem, which was intended to be a corpus separatum, or a separate, internationally run entity. Violence only worsened. As Britain completed its withdrawal in 1948 Jewish leaders declared the establishment of the state of Israel. Neighbouring Arab countries promptly invaded.

1967 After the six-day war In 1967, during the six-day war between Israel and its Arab neighbours, Israel captured the West Bank, East Jerusalem, the Gaza Strip, the Golan Heights and the Sinai peninsula. It annexed East Jerusalem, along with a slice of the West Bank, and moved to build Jewish settlements in the occupied lands.

In October 1973, on the Jewish holy day of Yom Kippur, Egypt and Syria launched an attack in Sinai and the Golan Heights. Under American auspices, Israel and Egypt signed the Camp David accords in 1978 and a peace treaty the following year. Israel agreed to give back all of Sinai, and to grant Palestinians autonomy. Outraged Arab countries kicked Egypt out of the Arab league, and there was no progress on Palestinian autonomy.

Today almost 3m Palestinians live in the West Bank, as well as more than 450,000 Israelis living in settlements (excluding East Jerusalem), a figure that has grown roughly fourfold since the Oslo accords were signed. Some settlers have now lived in the West Bank for two generations. Jerusalem is ringed with settlements. Palestinians in Gaza fare considerably worse than those elsewhere. The region has been controlled by Hamas, a militant group, since 2007. After it came to power, Egypt and Israel tightened a stifling blockade on the territory. Hamas militants and Israel have now been at war five times. The latest fighting has been the deadliest yet.

One thing that comes to my mind is the current Hamas strike seems much like previous Arab invasions of Israel, i.e., if you go to war with a country, you should expect adverse consequences, especially if you lose the war you started. This is not a matter of "might makes right" or "to the winner goes the spoils." It's a simple matter of regardless of one's intentions, worst-case scenarios need to be considered. I mean, what did Hamas expect to result from their attack? And if it was to inspire other Arab nations to rise up in support of Hamas, the primary place that has happened has been on American college campuses, and that pretty much confirms the stupidity or ignorance of the Hamas terror plan.

My other point is the language: Islamophobia means fear of Islam, not hate. Anti Semitism means death to Israel; in today's climate that's not cancel culture, it's hate speech of the highest, clearest order. Our media don't seem to understand the very language that they use.