The Middle East crisis – What is all the fighting about?
It is probably the first time in my life that i managed to study the‘history’ of something with real interest to know some stuff. Here I am putting forth some facts i gathered. The Israel – Palestine conflict is probably one of the oldest and most gruesome conflicts the world has ever seen – simply because of the sole reason that the huge number of causalities has mainly been civilian. The Israeli Ministry of foreign affairs data on this can be found here.
It is a sad and stark example of what effects can arise when human interests and emotions clash.
The history of the Palestine and Israel is too long to be told in short. It should suffice to say that the region currently belonging to Israel and Palestine (known collectively as Palestine) was subjected to repeated occupation by different rulers, right from the Egyptians (remember the story of Moses who rescued suffering Jews from the hands of Rameses), Romans, Turks, Arabs to the British and its Allies. The Jews, hence, found themselves oppressed, persecuted, made numerous revolts and often were forced to flee from their ‘homeland’. They never seemed to be in their ‘homeland’ at any point of time.
Historically, the strife between Israel and Palestine seems to be not due to religion. Land, rather has been the sole reason for struggle. The Arabs claim that Palestine (including Israel) belongs to them. Records reveal that entire area of Palestine was mainly inhabited by arabs and the number of Jews during the 1940’s was very less comparatively (obvious from the reasoning in the previous para). Post World War II, in 1948, the United Nations divided the land of Palestine into Israel and Palestine and had given the majority of the better land (rich in resources and water) to Jews while the Arabs were given only a small portion of the land.
Jewish settlements before UN partition - yellow area marks Palestine
Proposed Partion Plan by UN - Note the amount of land alloted to Jews. Jerusalem was to be under international control
This angered the Arabs and they refused to accept the state of Israel. The Arab states of Egypt, Lebanon, Syria and Jordan tried to reclaim the land by waging many wars against Israel, but failed repeatedly. Also, ever since it was established, Israel had been getting huge amount of aids from the US (basically US wanted a friend in the middle east to protect its own interests) and its economy became superior to that of the partitioned Palestine. Its armies evolved to become one of the strongest and technologically best equipped in the middle east. One particular war in which Israel also managed to expand its territory is known as the ‘6 day war’. It was a ‘preemptive’ strike as claimed by Israel to prevent Arab troops which had bordered Israel on all the sides (ready to strike Israel to reclaim the old Palestine). The amount of land under Israel increased dramatically and also the number of Arabs under Israeli rule.
Israel in 1967 (after the 6 day war). Note the regions near to Lebanon and Egypt have now been taken over by Israel
Israel since 1967 - the white areas are regions of undecided control.
This infuriated the Palestinians and prompted the creation of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) which declared its intention was the ‘destruction of Israel’. The PLO was headed by the then prime minister of Palestine, Yasser Arafat. But it slowly proved to be ineffective and with time more and more radical extremists started taking control of PLO. Israel on the other hand slowly started to encroach upon what was remaining of Palestine as well. Both these factors contributed to a revolution also known as the ‘Intifada’ in Palestine but it was dealt with brute force by Israel and slowly its force waned as well. Faced with defeat and desperation, the periods after the revolution saw the growth of terrorist activities and establishment of various terror groups such as Hamas, Islamic Jihad etc.
Late in 2007, the Hamas took control of Gaza with an extremely hostile takeover from Israel. Since then, the borders of Gaza have been closed by Israel thus stopping essential supplies to the territory. Hamas has launched numerous terrorist attacks on Israeli civilians including rocket launches into populated Israeli territory and Israel has retalitated with military offensive. The latest in the series of conflicts is the 21 day offensive launched by Israel on the pretext of wiping out various tunnels and locations Hamas uses for its terrorist activities.
Looking at it all, it becomes clear that this issue is similar to our Kashmir dispute. Each country feels it is right and never going to give up or compromise its stand. Whether this will have an end, only time will tell. All one can hope for is more innocent lives should not be lost in the name of holy wars/jihad.
The following links have much more information on this issue.
http://www.mideastweb.org/briefhistory.htm
http://www.fromoccupiedpalestine.org/node/737
http://www.globalissues.org/article/119/the-middle-east-conflict-a-brief-background
Also here is one more post which claims Israel as a nation which indulges in terrorism.
http://charlie180.wordpress.com/2008/05/27/israel-is-nuculear/
I would like to supplement..
this is a place of importance cos it is religious epicenter for three major conflicting religions… jews had their solomon temple… jesus was born and al aqsa mosque hope u know it…
romans invaded israel to take control of the entire egyptian treasure under solomons temple.. whch is now the formation of switzerland and U.S… yes all the money into U.S. britain and swiss is from them.. strange eh… try looking for poor knights of templar.. u will find a lot…
arabs invaded for the religious sentiments.. i would say turks rather… anyways good review..
hope u got this linking culture inspired from some one else
thanks for supplementing da…..i did know that romans invaded but didnt know that they did it for wealth
….and to tell the truth, the same person who inspired me to the linking culture inspired me into blogging as well 
for u r comment on kashmir i am little bit offended to it.. if u go thru simla agreement india gave 90,000 prisoners of war and all of the captured land back to pakisthan and made a statement clear that it is not for the fantasy of land and also it cant give back to what belongs itself.. chk my blog on misconceptions no.8
well am sorry if that offended you….i was just trying to make a comparison….as far as i can see in ur blog, no 8 just says that kashmir does not belong to muslims and hindus have lived there long enough….assuming this is true…what is the motive of militants and their claims ?
its a big story.. when india was declared independent and pakisthan , there were few kingdoms like the one in east india and nawab in hyderabad and many.. all nawabs wnated themselves to be in paks.. and pakisthan started invading many places near gujarat and many places when india was relaxing before the declaration.. so it was who gets more land.. when india sorted oout thgs.. kashmir was scape goat halfway… and then later on after 65 and 71 wars all these ppl who were in border were affected which made them fight for azad kashmir and not part of pakisthan.. not for pakisthan but for azad kashmir..
look more info.. i can search back if u want more…
so on the whole its about land though the motive behind acquiring the land is different right?in any case, this problem cannot be solved either unless either of the person is willing to give up on the land or willing to coexist peacefully.This was the point i am trying to communicate with that comparison.
If you want to know more, there is this book called ‘O Jerusalem’.. Its a brilliant book which one should read if you want to know more abt the Israel-Arab history from 1948 onwards