The Arab-Jewish Conflict: Past and Present

Paper Summary:

A breakdown of clashes between Arabs and Jews from 1948 until Prime Minister Barak's time. The Palestine question is discussed as well as how different Arab groups formed and why each direct confrontation came about.

From the Paper:

"Tensions between Arabs and Jews extend back centuries, but the modern conflict begins with the creation of the state of Israel in 1948, after which there was fighting between the newly declared state and her Arab neighbors, and in 1949 the fighting ended with armistice agreements between Israel and Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria. Israel as a state developed out of the Palestinian question. When the British wanted to turn the state of Palestine over to the United Nations, a solution to the issue of what people would reside in Palestine was reached in the form of partition. Jerusalem would be made an international city in which there would be free access for worship in Christian, Islamic, and Jewish shrines and holy places. The Jews accepted the partition, but the Arabs did not, feeling that the agreement actually gave Jewish landowners more than 50 percent of Palestine. After the war and the creation of the state of Israel, Israel now controlled half of Jerusalem, and nearly 60 percent of the Palestinians had been uprooted from their homes. Displaced Palestinians lived in crude refugee camps, and the remaining Palestinians lived within the 22.6 percent of the territory the Israeli's had failed to capture (Neff 23-24).
Israel thus began in conflict with her neighbors, and tensions continued during the years following the creation of the Israeli state. During this same era, the United States and the Soviet Union each became embroiled in the conflict, forced to choose sides and to become more and more enmeshed in Middle Eastern politics. Direct confrontation occurred in 1956, 1967, and 1973 (Neff 27). After the Sinai Campaign of 1956, there was a period of relative quiet along the Israel-Egypt border, in part because of the presence of the United Nations. This did not mean that the conflict was ended, however, and within a year of the "settlement" of the 1956 dispute, the Arab world experienced a series of upheavals (Herzog 145-146)."

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