The eruption of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is heading for an “uncontainable security and humanitarian crisis over 300 people including children been killed and sadly, this catastrophe is going on. This conflict came from the intercommunal violence in Mandatory Palestine between Israelis and Arabs from 1920 and erupted into full-scale hostilities in the 1947–48 civil war. The conflict continues to the present day on various levels.
After World War II, in 1947, the UN adopted a Partition Plan for Mandatory Palestine recommending the creation of independent Arab and Jewish states and an internationalized Jerusalem. This partition plan was accepted by the Jews but rejected by the Arabs. The day after the establishment of a Jewish state in Eretz Israel, to be known as the State of Israel on 14 May 1948, neighbouring Arab armies invaded the former British mandate and fought the Israeli forces. Later, the All-Palestine Government was established by the Arab League on 22 September 1948 to govern the Egyptian-controlled enclave in Gaza. It was soon recognized by all Arab League members except Transjordan. Though jurisdiction of the Government was declared to cover the whole of the former Mandatory Palestine, its effective jurisdiction was limited to the Gaza Strip. Israel later captured the Gaza Strip and the Sinai Peninsula from Egypt, the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) from Jordan, and the Golan Heights from Syria in June 1967 during the Six-Day War.
On 15 November 1988 in Algiers, Yasser Arafat, Chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), proclaimed the establishment of the State of Palestine. A year after the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993, the Palestinian National Authority was formed to govern the areas A and B in the West Bank, comprising 165 “islands”, and the Gaza Strip. Gaza would later be governed by Hamas in 2007, two years after the Israeli disengagement from Gaza.
The State of Palestine is recognized by 138 of the 193 UN members (Israel is recognized by 164) and since 2012 has a status of a non-member observer state in the United Nations. Palestine is a member of the Arab League, the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, the G77, the International Olympic Committee, and other international bodies.
In 1947, the UN voted for Palestine to be split into separate Jewish and Arab states, with Jerusalem becoming an international city. That plan was accepted by Jewish leaders but rejected by the Arab side and never implemented. The soldiers of allied Arab Legion forces fire, 06 March 1948 from East sector of Jerusalem on Jewish fighters of the Haganah, the Jewish Agency self-defence force, based in Jemin Moshe quarter of the West sector of the city during during the first Arab-Jewish conflict. In 1948, unable to solve the problem, British rulers left and Jewish leaders declared the creation of the state of Israel.
Many Palestinians objected and a war followed. Troops from neighbouring Arab countries invaded. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fled or were forced out of their homes in what they call Al Nakba, or the “Catastrophe”. By the time the fighting ended in a ceasefire the following year, Israel controlled most of the territory. Jordan occupied land which became known as the West Bank, and Egypt occupied Gaza. Jerusalem was divided between Israeli forces in the West, and Jordanian forces in the East.
Because there was never a peace agreement – each side blamed the other – there were more wars and fighting in the decades which followed. In another war in 1967, Israel occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank, as well as most of the Syrian Golan Heights, and Gaza and the Egyptian Sinai Peninsula.
Most Palestinian refugees and their descendants live in Gaza and the West Bank, as well as in neighbouring Jordan, Syria and Lebanon. Neither they nor their descendants have been allowed by Israel to return to their homes – Israel says this would overwhelm the country and threaten its existence as a Jewish state.
Israel still occupies the West Bank, and although it pulled out of Gaza the UN still regards that piece of land as part of occupied territory.
Israel claims the whole of Jerusalem as its capital, while the Palestinians claim East Jerusalem as the capital of a future Palestinian state. The US is one of only a handful of countries to recognise Israel’s claim to the whole of the city. In the past 50 years Israel has built settlements in these areas, where more than 600,000 Jews now live.
Palestinians say these are illegal under international law and are obstacles to peace, but Israel denies this. Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank say they’re suffering because of Israeli actions and restrictions. Israel say it is only acting to protect itself from Palestinian violence. Things have escalated since the start of the holy Muslim month of Ramadan in mid-April 2021, with nightly clashes between police and Palestinians. The threatened eviction of some Palestinian families in East Jerusalem has also caused rising anger.
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