No other conflict has come to the forefront of international attention
as often - or quite as divisively - as the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.
For almost 75 years it's been a recurring source of concern for the international community, not
least of all because it became a touch paper for wider conflicts between Israel and the Arab world.
And yet, while many have strong opinions on the issue,
the exact origins of the situation are often little-known or understood.
So, just how did the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict emerge?
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Hello and welcome. If you're new to the channel, my name is James Ker-Lindsay and here I take an
informed look at international relations, conflicts and the origins of countries.
There's a tendency for people to try to explain modern conflicts by referring to ancient hatreds.
In almost all cases, it's wrong.
Invariably, there's nothing in distant history that says two peoples are destined to fight.
Instead history is overlaid on top of questions that are more usually to do
with more contemporary issues of international law or evolving political norms and values.
This is no less the case for the Israeli-Palestinian
Conflict than for any other conflict I've covered.
Although both sides will point to ancient historic ties to the territory,
in truth the conflict is far more readily understood by concepts that
come up time and time again in my videos: decolonisation and self-determination.
What makes the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict so unusual,
and so emotive, is the way in which the dynamics of the conflict have developed.
So, how did the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians emerge.
The conflict is centered on territory that lies at the far end of the Mediterranean Sea.
In total, the area under discussion includes the State of Israel,
which is recognised by 164 of the 193 members of the United Nations,
and those areas that are now more generally known by the UN as Occupied Palestinian Territory.
This is in turn divided into the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip,
both of which are formally under the control of the Palestinian National Authority.
While the State of Palestine has been recognised by around 140 UN members, and has been admitted
as a non-member observer state at the UN, its passage to full membership has been blocked.
While many might think the story would start in the Middle East,
in fact the origins of the current conflict can be found in the growing
violent anti-semitism in Russia and Eastern Europe in the 1880s.
As the jewish population began to emigrate to escape persecution,
the vast majority made their way to the United States.
However, several tens of thousands chose to go to Palestine,
which was still at the time under Ottoman rule.
Shaped by European ideas of nation and statehood, they formulated their own concept of a Jewish
state centred on the ancestral homeland of the Jewish people - a concept known as Zionism.
At first, their presence seemed to be accepted by the majority Arab population,
not least of all because these new arrivals often bought land at heavily inflated prices.
But, as the numbers began to increase,
resentment and suspicion grew over what many came to see as external colonisation.
Meanwhile, just as Zionists were fed by ideas of nationalism and statehood,
the Arab people of Palestine - alongside the Arab people more generally - were also
beginning to forge what would eventually become their own sense of identity.
This emerging nationalism would become especially important
with the outbreak of the First World War.
Keen to wrest control of the Middle East from the Ottoman Empire,
which had sided with Germany, Britain and France hatched a secret plan - The
Sykes-Picot Agreement - to carve up the region into specific spheres of influence.
While according to this Palestine would become an international sphere,
in an attempt to persuade local populations to rise up against Ottoman rule,
the British government now supported Arab calls for the establishment of their own
independent state, which they believed should include Palestine.
And this is where the problem really starts.
At the same time, and keen to win over Jewish support, Britain
also undertook to support the creation of a Jewish homeland in Palestine.
On 2 November 1917, the British foreign secretary, Arthur Balfour, wrote to Lord Rothschild,
one of the leading figures of the British Jewish community, explicitly stating the
British government's support for the creation of a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine.
Just weeks later, on 30 December, British troops marched into Jerusalem.
British control over Palestine was officially recognized at the Conference of San Remo in 1920
and confirmed by the League of Nations in 1922,
when Britain was awarded the Mandate for Palestine.
Importantly, the mandate also explicitly recognised the end goal of
'reconstituting' a 'Jewish national home' and stipulated that an appropriate agency should be
recognised to advise the British authorities on the establishment of this Jewish national home.
However, all of this came with a specific proviso that, 'nothing should be done which
might prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-jewish communities in Palestine.'
In the meantime, tensions between the Arabs and Jews continued to grow,
leading to several serious outbreaks of violence, including rioting by Palestinians in August 1929.
These pressures would increase still further in the 1930s with
ever more Jewish immigration into Palestine.
Although Palestine was overwhelmingly Arab when Britain took control in 1917 - with an estimated
700,000 Arabs to around 60,000 Jews - this changed dramatically over the course of the 1930s,
as around a quarter of a million Jews fled persecution in Europe.
Meanwhile, at the same time as tensions rose between the two communities,
Palestinian Arabs also began to protest against British rule.
Starting with a prolonged general strike in 1936, which later turned to a violent
uprising, they demanded an end to Jewish immigration and the creation of an Arab state.
Realising the need to address the issue,
the British Government set up a body, the Peel Commission, to explore the options for Palestine.
Noting the significant effect of large-scale Jewish immigration,
and the intense national feelings that had emerged in both communities, it argued that the creation
of a unified Palestinian state of Jews and Arabs was now extremely unlikely to succeed.
Instead, it recommended that the territory should be partitioned.
One part would be awarded to neighbouring Transjordan, an
Arab state under British protection, another would become a Jewish state,
and the third element would remain under the mandate.
Additionally, it foresaw certain land transfers, and even a population exchange - although this
would see up to 225,000 Arabs forced to move, as opposed to a little more than a thousand Jews.
While Jewish leaders were willing to accept the ideas, they were rejected by the Arabs.
As a result, the proposal was subsequently rejected by another body,
the Palestine Partition Commission, which was formed to examine the practicalities of the plan.
Instead, it proposed dividing up the territory into a small Jewish state,
an Arab state, and three mandate territories, including Jerusalem,
which would remain under British rule pending a final decision on their future.
However, and following objections, this time from both Jewish and Arab leaders,
this was rejected by the British government on the grounds that it was impractical.
In early 1939, the British government called a conference in London to try to break the deadlock.
But this also failed to reach a mutually acceptable settlement.
With war looming, and feeling the need to keep the Arab populations of Egypt and Saudi
Arabia on its side to protect the strategically important Suez Canal and secure oil supplies,
London now abandoned the idea of partition and published a new policy paper.
This envisaged the creation of an independent Palestinian
state in which Jews and Arabs shared government.
And while Britain refused to stop all immigration into Palestine,
it now introduced heavy restrictions on the number of Jews who would be allowed in in future.
This change would have a dramatic effect on the situation on the ground.
Infuriated by the British change of heart,
several Jewish parliamentary groups now launched an armed campaign against British rule.
This accelerated at the end of the Second World War, leading to the most notorious incident
of all: the bombing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem on 22 July 1946, which killed 91 people.
Meanwhile, Britain's steadfast resistance to more Jewish immigration, at a time when many
of europe's remaining Jews were trying to make it to Palestine in the aftermath of the Holocaust,
increasingly put it at odds with other partners, including the United States.
Exhausted with war, and with 100,000 troops now committed to Palestine,
Britain decided it couldn't handle the situation anymore.
In February 1947, it passed the mata over to the newly established United Nations,
which set up an 11-member Special Committee on Palestine, UNSCOP.
Following a visit to Palestine and neighbouring countries,
as well as to refugee camps in Europe, and having held public hearings,
the Committee unanimously recommended the termination of the British mandate.
And by 8-3 supported the partition of Palestine into a Jewish state and an Arab state - composed
of 56 and 44 percent of Palestine respectively - with Jerusalem becoming an international city.
Although the Palestinians rejected the proposal, on 29 November 1947,
the UN General Assembly passed Resolution 181(II), endorsing the plan by 33 votes to 13.
As well as being opposed by all the Muslim-majority members,
10 countries abstained, including Britain.
Just days later, the British government decided that it would not
implement a plan that had not been agreed by both sides.
Instead, it announced that its mandate over Palestine
would end a little over five and a half months later, at midnight 14 May 1948.
With the countdown to British departure now underway,
the situation on the ground deteriorated rapidly as fighting broke out between Jews and Arabs.
Meanwhile, just hours after Jewish leaders proclaimed the independence of the State of
Israel on the day of Britain's departure, the new country came under attack from its
Arab neighbours, including Egypt, Syria, Transjordan, and Lebanon.
However, the Arab armies were ill-coordinated,
politically and militarily, and over the following months Israeli forces managed to beat them back.
By the time the fighting ended, the following March,
the situation on the ground had changed radically.
The State of Israel had expanded its control to 78 percent of historic Palestine.
Meanwhile, what remained in Arab hands - the West Bank and Gaza
Strip - were now controlled by Jordan and Egypt respectively.
All this would have catastrophic effects on Arab Palestinians.
For a start, it signaled the end - at least at that stage - of any hopes of
the creation of an independent Palestinian state.
Moreover, over 700,000 people have been forced to flee their homes during the conflict
and were now denied the right to return.
More to the point, the conflict also meant that the existence of
the State of Israel was now an established fact.
On 11 May 1949, the UN General Assembly passed resolution 273(III) - by 37 votes to 12,
with nine abstentions - admitting Israel as the 59th member of the United Nations.
But, despite its formal acceptance by much of the international community,
including the United States and the Soviet Union,
Arab states, and most of the wider Muslim world, refused to recognise Israel.
There's a tendency to reduce conflicts to ancient hatreds.
However, time and time again, what appears to be centred on some historical grievance
from time immemorial is in fact rooted in far more modern issues.
It's no different with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
While many see this as some ancient Jewish versus Muslim hatred, it isn't.
In fact, it's something far more contemporary and familiar.
Like so many other cases I've covered, it's rooted in colonialism and self-determination.
But what made this particularly challenging
was that the process of decolonisation became overlaid by a second factor:
the claim to the territory by another group that had established a presence on the ground.
It's this that perhaps best explains the strong
emotional response to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
For Palestinians and their sympathisers,
the situation is seen as a case of thwarted self-determination.
They were denied the right to their own state, as given to other colonial peoples.
Instead, their territory was taken by outsiders who had been promised the land
by the colonial power, Britain, against the wishes of the majority on the ground.
Meanwhile, for the Jews and their supporters, the creation of Israel is
also seen as an expression of self-determination for a stateless and persecuted people returning
to their ancestral homeland after a period of extreme trauma.
As they see it, the Palestinians and the neighbouring Arab states refused to
share that territory and fought to deny the Jewish people the right to their statehood.
They gambled on the destruction of Israel, and lost.
Ultimately, though, the partition of Palestine and the creation of the State of Israel
was just the beginning of the story.
Over the next four and a half decades, the conflict would not only continue,
but it would also intensify - a situation I'll return to in future videos.
I hope you found that interesting. If so, here are some more videos that you might find useful.
Thanks so much for watching and see you in the next video.