Israel and Palestine are currently on the brink of all out war, a level of fighting
that hasn't been seen since 2012.
Yes.
That was two years ago.
Less than 24 months.
In light of the frequency of incidents, it may be good to focus on the conflict as a
whole, instead of the recent activities.
So let's go back.
How did this all start?
Prior to World War I, that area was controlled by the Ottoman Empire.
They were technically Arabs, but most people living under their rule considered them to
be conquering Turks.
As such, various groups that wanted Arab and Israeli independence started to emerge.
These groups weren't fighting against each other, they had a common enemy: The Turks.
As a result they co-existed somewhat peacefully.
Then in World War I, Britain encouraged Arabs to organize and revolt against the Ottomans,
promising them the right to set up an Arab State after the war.
The Arab world complied and started Revolting against the Ottomans in 1916.
Around the same time, the British Foreign secretary Arthur James Balfour, gave official
support to Britain's Jewish community to establish a "national home" for Jews in Palestine.
And that's where it all began.
Both sides thought they had right to establish a nation in the region, so they spent the
next 30 years establishing the groundwork for those nations.
Arab groups did that, by fighting against the Turks and organizing themselves into somewhat
cohesive national identities; Iran, Iraq, Palestine, etc..
The Jews did it, by migrating en masse to the area and setting up their own economy
and system for self-governance.
Their migration was spurred on by hundreds of years of Jewish persecution in Europe,
two world wars, and the Holocaust.
So Israel was established, in large part, as a safe haven for Jewish Refugees.
During this migration period, there were conflicts over land and territory between Jews and Palestinians,
but compared to today it was relatively calm.
Then in 1947, Britain and the UN finally got around to keeping their word and allowing
the Palestinians and Jews to establish their own nations.
They broke the area up with borders that looked like this.
Israel is in the Green.
Palestine is in the Orange.
The problem was, a lot of Palestinians lived in the area now controlled by Israel and some
Israelis lived in the area now controlled by Palestine.
The Arab World thought that Israel was infringing on the state they were promised after the
war, and Israel was already starting to disenfranchise Palestinians stuck inside their borders.
In 1948, fighting broke out between Palestinians and Israelis, causing the surrounding Arab
nations to attack Israel in an attempt to eliminate it all together.
Israel won.
During the conflict, over 700,000 Palestinians left the area or were displaced.
And Israel had expanded their nation to control what is now about 78% of historic Palestine.
Palestinians also claim that after the war, Israel wouldn't let them return home, forcing
most of them to live in The West Bank and The Gaza Strip.
Both areas now function as a home for Palestinian refugees.
In the years that followed, Israel established walls to separate the Palestinian areas out,
and they also enacted laws to further establish their Jewish State; laws that, by nature,
offered fewer rights to non-Jews.
They also established a strong active military.
There are way too many incidents and militarily conflicts that took place after that to recount
here but the basic story for each conflict is generally this.
Militant Palestinian groups or other Arab nations use force in an attempt to either
reclaim land, protest the conditions of Palestinians under Israeli rule, or eliminate the entire
nation of Israel.
Israel responds by winning militarily, displacing more Palestinians and expanding their own
territory.
Sandwiched somewhere in there, are continual failing peace talks, and an ongoing debate
about US aide to Israel.
Obviously this is a huge issue and we can't cover everything, but we did include links
to more info in the description.
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