What is the Fighting About?
Palestine and Israel

Land possession disputes in the region we know today as Palestine and Israel began before King David conquered Jerusalem in 1000 BCE, before his son built the first Jewish temple there, before Jesus arrived there at the age of 30, and before Muhammad's mystical night journey from Mecca to Jerusalem in 620 CE. The fact that the region became central to more than one major religion has only added fuel to an already existing fire. Military rulers have been conquering and displacing people there for millennia. There was even a time when the land was vulnerable to attack not for the value of the land itself, but because it lay in the path of a profitable trade route between Mesopotamia and Egypt. The old reasons for fighting fall away as new ones develop, and this continues today.

The modern causes of fighting lie in the past century, but the stage was set by changes coming from Europe that affected the Middle East from the 14th to the 18th centuries. Eastern trade routes became dominated by European interests, and the Industrial Revolution strengthened Europe's economic and military capacity. At the same time, Eastern distrust of and resistance to Western modernization further increased tensions between the East and the West.
In the 1880's, Jewish families, being persecuted in other parts of the world, began immigrating to Palestine in what they viewed as a reclamation of land that had belonged to them earlier. This was the beginning of the Zionist movement, which increased fighting specifically between Arabs and Jews in Palestine.
During this time, the region was part of the greater Ottoman Empire, whose allegiance was with Germany during World War I. To aid in weakening the Turkish rule of the Ottoman Empire, European powers encouraged Arab nationalism, which later became an obstacle when those same powers wanted in turn to hold influence over Arab populations. In dissolving the Ottoman Empire after World War I, Britain and France gained control of the empire, with the League of Nations handing Palestine to Britain in the British Mandate of Palestine. This mandate included the Balfour Declaration, which stipulated the creation of a Jewish homeland within Palestine for displaced Jews worldwide. This further increased Jewish immigration and Arab/Israeli tensions, and fostered Israeli militant activity in Palestine as a backlash to the violence. In an attempt to reduce the conflict, Britain limited Jewish immigration for a time before World War II, which caused some Jews to be sent back to Europe just as Hitler was gaining power in Germany.
After World War II and the extermination of millions of Jews in Europe, the immigration of Jews into Palestine was too great for the British to control. The United Nations once again stepped in. In 1947 the United Nations proposed the Partition Plan for Palestine (Resolution 181), dividing the region into Palestine and Israel, which the Arab nations rejected. This Partition Plan and the repercussions from it are the basis of the current fighting.
In 1948 the British withdrew from Palestine and Israel claimed independence. The fighting escalated into the 1948 Arab/Israeli war which ended with Israel gaining more territory than what was set forth in the Partition Plan, a further exacerbation to the fighting. This 1949 division is known as the Green Line and the fighting has continued regarding these boundaries, as well as those set by later wars, such as the 1967 Six-Day War.

Learn more about this author, Tessa Thomas.
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