Why is there a dispute between Israel and Palestine
Tens of thousands have died as a result, and millions have been displaced. Its past holds the key to its future. We dissect it. 
Nakba 1948: Approximately five months after the state of Israel was established, a group of Palestinian refugees fled a village in Galilee, carrying their belongings on their heads.
Nakba 1948: Approximately five months after the state of Israel was established, a group of Palestinian refugees fled a village in Galilee, carrying their belongings on their heads.
Why is there a dispute between Israel and Palestine?
With tens of thousands of fatalities and millions of people displaced, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict stems from a colonial crime committed more than a century ago.
The world is once again keenly focused on what could happen next, with Israel declaring war on the Gaza Strip in response to an unprecedented offensive by the armed Palestinian organization Hamas on Saturday.
In attacks on several villages in southern Israel, Hamas fighters have claimed the lives of over 800 Israelis. In retaliation, Israel began bombarding the Gaza Strip, killing around 500 Palestinians. Troops have reportedly been mobilised around the Gaza border by it in anticipation of a ground assault. Additionally, it declared a "total blockade" of the Gaza Strip on Monday, preventing the enclave from receiving food, gasoline, and other necessities. This action is considered a war crime under international law.But history is the source of what will happen in the next several days and weeks.
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been characterised as unsolvable, complex, and impasse by Western media sources, scholars, military experts, and international leaders for decades. Here is a short tutorial to help you resolve one of the oldest disagreements in history:
What was the Balfour Declaration ?
- A letter was written by Arthur Balfour, the country's foreign secretary at the time, to Lionel Walter Rothschild, a prominent member of the British Jewish community, on November 2, 1917, more than a century ago.
- Despite being brief (only 67 words), the letter's contents had a profound impact on Palestine that is being felt today.
- The British government was tasked with assisting in "the achievement of this object" and "the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people." The Balfour Declaration is the name given to the letter.
- Essentially, a country where more than ninety percent of the population were native Palestinian Arabs was promised to the Zionist movement by a European power.
- Created in 1923, the British Mandate persisted until 1948. During that time, the British faced protests and strikes in addition to facilitating large-scale Jewish immigration, as many of the newcomers were escaping Nazism in Europe. The shifting demography of their nation and the British seizure of Palestinian territory to be given to Jewish settlers worried the Palestinians.
What happen during the 1930s?
- The Arab Revolt, which lasted from 1936 to 1939, was ultimately brought on by growing tensions.
- To protest British colonialism and increasing Jewish immigration, the newly established Arab National Committee called on Palestinians to go on a national strike, stop paying taxes, and boycott Jewish goods in April 1936.
- The British responded to the six-month strike with brutality, carrying out punitive home demolitions and a widespread arrest campaign—a practice that Israel still uses against Palestinians today.
- The Palestinian peasant resistance organization spearheaded the second phase of the uprising, which started in late 1937 and was directed against British forces and colonialism.
- In the latter part of 1939, 30,000 British troops had been gathered in Palestine. Air strikes destroyed homes, curfews were implemented, villages were bombarded, and summary executions and administrative detentions were commonplace.
- In parallel, the British worked with the Jewish settlers to establish military organizations including the Special Night Squads, a Jewish fighter force under British leadership that served as a "counterinsurgency force."
- In order to strengthen the Haganah, the Jewish militia that eventually became the backbone of the Israeli army, firearms were surreptitiously imported and weapons factories were constructed within the Yishuv, the pre-state settlement population.
- During the three-year uprising, there were five thousand Palestinian deaths, fifteen thousand to twenty thousand injuries, and five thousand arrests.
What was the UN partition plan?
- Despite owning only 6% of the land, the Jewish population in Palestine had skyrocketed to 33% by 1947.
- Resolution 181, which demanded that Palestine be divided into Arab and Jewish states, was accepted by the UN.
- The plan was rejected by the Palestinians because it gave the Jewish state approximately 55% of Palestine, including the majority of the fertile coastal region.
- At that time, 67% of the population of historic Palestine was made up of Palestinians, who also possessed 94% of the territory.
The 1948 Nakba, or the ethic cleansing of Palestine
- Prior to the British Mandate's expiration on May 14, 1948, Zionist paramilitaries had already begun a military campaign aimed at demolishing Palestinian towns and villages in order to extend the boundaries of the future Zionist state.
- In the Palestinian village of Deir Yassin, which is located outside of Jerusalem, over a hundred men, women, and children perished in April 1948.
- That established the tone for the remainder of the operation, during which over 500 Palestinian towns, cities, and villages were demolished in what the Palestinians describe to as the Nakba, which means "catastrophe" in Arabic, between 1947 and 1949.
- A total of 15,000 Palestinians are thought to have died, many of them in massacres.
- 78% of historic Palestine was taken up by the Zionist movement. What are currently the beleaguered Gaza Strip and the occupied West Bank made up the remaining 22%.
- 750,000 Palestinians are thought to have been evicted from their homes.
- Currently, six million of their descendants are refugees, living in 58 filthy camps spread over Palestine and the surrounding nations of Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and Egypt.
- 1948 May 15 was Israel's official founding date.
- The first Arab-Israeli conflict broke out the next day, and hostilities between Israel and Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, and Syria came to an armistice in January 1949.
- Resolution 194, enacted by the UN General Assembly in December 1948, demands that Palestinian refugees be granted the right of return.
The Years after the Nakba
Before being eventually granted Israeli citizenship, at least 150,000 Palestinians continued to live under strict military occupation in the newly formed state of Israel for nearly 20 years.
After Jordan established administrative control over the West Bank in 1950, Egypt seized control of the Gaza Strip.
The Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) was founded in 1964, and the Fatah political party followed suit a year later.
The Naksa, or the six-Day War and the settlements
During the Six-Day War against a coalition of Arab forces, Israel captured the majority of historic Palestine on June 5, 1967, including the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, East Jerusalem, the Syrian Golan Heights, and the Egyptian Sinai Peninsula.This resulted in a second forced expulsion for certain Palestinians, known as a "setback" or "Naksa" in Arabic.
The Marxist-Leninist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine was established in December 1967. The situation of the Palestinian people came to the attention of the world during the course of the following ten years due to a number of attacks and plane hijackings by leftist groups.
In the Gaza Strip and the occupied West Bank, settlement development started. A two-tier system was established, whereby Palestinians were forced to live under military occupation that discriminated against them and forbade any kind of civic or political expression, while Jewish settlers were granted all the rights and privileges of Israeli citizenship.
The first Intifada 9877-1993
- Four Palestinians were killed when an Israeli truck collided with two vans transporting Palestinian labourers in the Gaza Strip in December 1987, sparking the start of the first Palestinian Intifada.
- Stones were thrown by teenage Palestinians at Israeli army tanks and troops during the protests that quickly extended to the West Bank.
- Additionally, it resulted in the formation of the Hamas movement, a Muslim Brotherhood offshoot that used violent resistance to oppose Israeli occupation.
- The "Break their Bones" strategy promoted by then-Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin summed up the harsh response of the Israeli army. Summary executions, university closures, activist deportations, and home demolition were among the practices.
- The Unified National Leadership of the Uprising, a coalition of Palestinian political factions dedicated to ending the Israeli occupation and securing Palestinian independence, led the Intifada, which was predominantly carried out by young people.
- The PLO was acknowledged by the Arab League in 1988 as the exclusive representative of the Palestinian people.
- Popular mobilisations, large-scale demonstrations, acts of civil disobedience, well-planned strikes, and community cooperatives were the hallmarks of the Intifada.
- 237 children and 1,070 other Palestinians were slain by Israeli forces during the Intifada, according to B'T selem, an Israeli human rights organization. Over 175,000 Palestinians were taken into custody.
- The world community began looking for a way to resolve the conflict as a result of the Intifada.
The Oslo years and the Palestinian Authority
- With the 1993 signing of the Oslo Accords and the establishment of the Palestinian Authority (PA), an interim administration that was given some degree of autonomy in certain areas of the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip, the Intifada came to an end.
- The PLO essentially signed accords that granted Israel authority over most of the land and water resources in the West Bank, as well as 60% of the territory, on the pretext of a two-state solution.
- The PA was meant to clear the way for the first elected Palestinian government to govern the West Bank and Gaza Strip as an independent state with East Jerusalem as its capital, but that has never happened.
- The PA is viewed by its detractors as a dishonest subcontractor to the Israeli occupation, working closely with the Israeli military to suppress political activism and protest against Israel.
- Israeli construction of a concrete wall and electronic fence around the Gaza Strip in 1995 ended communication between the two divided Palestinian regions.
The second Intifada
- On September 28, 2000, Likud opposition leader Ariel Sharon made a provocative visit to the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in Jerusalem's Old City, which was surrounded by thousands of security troops. This marked the start of the second Intifada.
- Over the course of two days, 200 Palestinians were injured and five Palestinians died in clashes between Israeli authorities and protestors.
- A broad armed insurrection was triggered by the occurrence. Israel inflicted unparalleled harm on the infrastructure and economy of the Palestinian people during the Intifada.
- Israel started erecting a wall dividing the region, demolishing Palestinian towns and their means of subsistence, and reoccupied areas ruled by the Palestinian Authority.
- Although settlements are prohibited by international law, thousands of Jewish settlers have moved throughout the years to colonies built on land that was seized from the Palestinians. Roads and other infrastructure exclusive to settlers are dividing the occupied West Bank, dividing Palestinian cities and towns into Bantusthan, the segregated areas that the nation's former apartheid government created for Black South Africans. Consequently, space for Palestinians is becoming increasingly limited.
- Just over 110,000 Jewish settlers, including those in East Jerusalem, were residing in the West Bank at the time the Oslo Accords were signed. More than 700,000 people now reside on more than 100,000 hectares (390 square miles) of land that was taken from the Palestinians.
The Palestinian division and the Gaza blockade.
- Following the death of PLO leader Yasser Arafat in 2004, the second Intifada came to an end, Israeli settlements in the Gaza Strip were demolished, and 9,000 settlers and Israeli soldiers departed the territory.
- Palestinians cast their first ballots in a national election a year later.
- The majority went to Hamas. Nevertheless, a months-long civil war between Fatah and Hamas broke out, killing hundreds of Palestinians.
- Fatah, the principal Palestinian Authority party, was driven out of the Gaza Strip by Hamas and returned to power of some areas of the West Bank.
- Israel closed off the Gaza Strip by land, air, and sea in June 2007 after charging Hamas with "terrorism."
The wars on the Gaza strip
Four lengthy military incursions into Gaza have been conducted by Israel: in 2008, 2012, 2014, and 2021. Tens of thousands of houses, schools, and office buildings have been demolished, and thousands of Palestinians, many of them children, have died.
Because building supplies like steel and cement cannot enter Gaza due to the siege, reconstruction has been all but impossible.
Weapons that are prohibited globally, such phosphorous gas, were used in the 2008 attack.
In 2014, Israel killed approximately 2,100 Palestinians in 50 days, including nearly 500 children and 1,462 civilians.
Half a million people were displaced, 20,000 homes were destroyed, and over 11,000 Palestinians were injured during the Israeli-led attack known as Operation Protective Edge.
অর্ডিনারি আইটির নীতিমালা মেনে কমেন্ট করুন। প্রতিটি কমেন্ট রিভিউ করা হয়।
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