The history of Israel-Palestine conflict
Israel and Palestine have a long and bloody past, which can be traced back to the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948.
On May 14, 1948, David Ben-Gurion, head of the World Zionist Organisation, proclaimed the establishment of the State of Israel in Palestine.
US President Harry S Truman recognised the new nation on the same day. There were hundreds of thousands of Palestinians living in areas that then became Israel. Many were forced to flee.
The conflict between Hamas and Israel that broke out last Saturday follows years of fighting over the same land.
Hamas, the Palestinian militant group that controls the Gaza strip, launched an unprecedented surprise attack on Israel on Saturday, with paragliders flying into the country and attacking party-goers at a festival, while its fighters stormed Israeli communities near the border.
Hamas – which has been designated a terrorist group by Israel, the UK, the United States, the European Union and other nations – has now killed at least 1,300 people and seized more 100 hostages.
Israel responded with retaliatory air strikes that have killed more than 1,400 people in Gaza. It is planning a ground invasion with the next 24 hours, and has warned more than a million people living in Gaza to move south.
The outbreak of brutal violence can only be understood in the context of decades of disputes between Israel and Palestine, which have drawn in nations across the world and contributed to continued instability in the Middle East.
A British mandate
The late 19th century saw the establishment of the Zionist movement calling for creation of a homeland for the Jewish people in Palestine as they faced persecution in Europe. Immigration by Jews back to the area and the purchase of land was encouraged.
During the First World War, Palestine, which was part of the Ottoman Empire, became occupied by British forces and was under British military administration.
In 1917, the British Government issued the Balfour Declaration – a unilateral public statement announcing its support for the establishment of a “national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine, but said “nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine”.
After the First World War and the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, Britain was granted a mandate (power to govern) for Palestine, endorsed by the League of Nations, the forerunner to the United Nations (UN) in 1922.
Under the British mandate, there was large-scale Jewish immigration to the area mainly from Eastern Europe. Numbers swelled in the 1930s with the rise of Nazism and the persecution of Jews.
This led to Arab demands for independence and resistance to immigration. Between 1936 and 1939, there was an Arab revolt in Palestine.
The British Government responded to the violence with a series of commissions and inquiries. The Peel Commission of 1937 proposed a two-state solution to the conflict, with Palestine divided into one Arab state and one Jewish state.
The Partition Plan
After the Second World War, Britain submitted what had become “the Palestine problem” to the United Nations.
The UN proposed the partitioning of Palestine into two independent states, one Palestinian Arab and the other Jewish, with Jerusalem remaining international.
The plan was voted through and accepted by Jewish leaders but rejected by Arab leaders and never implemented, sparking further conflict between Arabs and Jews in the area.
In 1948, a day before the British mandate in Palestine expired, David Ben-Gurion, head of the World Zionist Organisation, declared the establishment of a Jewish State to be known as the State of Israel.
As the British mandate expired, a full-scale Arab-Israeli war erupted involving Jordan, Syria, Egypt and Iraq.
Around 700,000 Palestinians fled their homes in what they call Al Nakba – the “Catastrophe” – ending up in Jordan, Lebanon and Syria as well as in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
A ceasefire was declared in 1949, with Israel controlling most of the territory, Jordan in control of what became known as the West Bank, and Egypt occupying Gaza.
Jerusalem was divided between Israel in the west and Jordan in the east.
But there was no peace agreement.
What has happened since?
In 1967, Israel launched the Six-Day War against Egypt and Syria. Israel has occupied Jordan’s West Bank, Arab East Jerusalem and Syria’s Golan Heights ever since.
The Yom Kippur War saw Egypt and Syria attack Israeli positions along the Suez Canal and Golan Heights in 1973 but Israel pushed both armies back within three weeks.
Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982 with the declared intention to eliminate the Palestine Liberation Organisation and in 2006, war erupted in Lebanon again when Hezbollah militants captured two Israeli soldiers and Israel retaliated.
In 2005, Israel withdrew troops and settlers from Gaza. But the area has continued to see major flare-ups in 2006, 2008, 2012, 2014 and 2021 that involved Israeli air raids and Palestinian rocket fire, and sometimes cross border incursions by either side.
As well as wars, there have been two Palestinian intifadas, or uprisings, between 1987-1993 and again in 2000-05. The second saw waves of Hamas suicide bombings against Israelis.
Hamas, a spin-off of the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood formed in the late 80s, has frequently taken up arms against the Israeli authorities and advocates for the destruction of Israel.
The militants operate out of the Gaza Strip, a tiny portion of land home to two million Palestinians, which they have ruled since 2006 despite being regarded by many countries as a terrorist group.
Any movement towards peace?
Israeli and Palestinian peace talks have been held on and off between the 90s and the 2010s.
There were a series of talks in Norway which became known as the Oslo peace process in 1993 between Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and the PLO leader Yasser Arafat.
It led to Palestinians recognising the State of Israel and Israel recognising the PLO as the sole representative of the Palestinian people and a self-governing Palestinian Authority was established.
However, the signing of the Israeli-Palestinian Interim Agreement in September 1995 saw tensions rise in Israel.
And two months later, Prime Minister Rabin was assassinated by a right-wing Jewish extremist.
Attempts were made to revive the peace process in the 2000s.
The Camp David summit of 2000 saw President Bill Clinton, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Yasser Arafat meet but fail to reach agreement.
Talks also failed between Israelis and Palestinians in Washington in 2014.
Palestinians boycotted dealings with the administration of President Donald Trump because it reversed decades of US policy by refusing to endorse the two-state solution.
Tensions have ratcheted up further since Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu returned to power in December, at the head of a fractious coalition that includes ultra-nationalists and Jewish supremacists.
The conflict has escalated recently amid protests and riots by Palestinians against Israel’s forces.
As it launched its surprise assault on Saturday, Hamas cited increased Israeli settler violence against Palestinians, as well as the storming of the Al-Aqsa Mosque complex in occupied East Jerusalem, the world’s third-holiest site for Muslims, by ultranationalist Jewish settlers.
