History of the Arab-Israeli conflict

Around the 20th century BC, Sumerian Canaanites settled in the coastal areas and plains of Palestine. Later, the Jews conquered Canaan, occupied Palestine, and established two countries, Judea and Israel, which were later destroyed by foreigners. The Roman Empire invaded in BC 1 century, and most Jews were exiled all over the world.

In the 7th century, Palestine became a part of the Arab Empire. Arabs moved in and assimilated with local aborigines, and gradually formed modern Palestinian Arabs. The loose religious policy in the southern part of the Arab Empire enabled Jews to survive here. Palestine has been inhabited by Palestinian Arabs for hundreds of years. During this period, they fought against invaders such as the Crusaders and made a lot of sacrifices.

Palestine became a part of the Ottoman Empire from the16th century, and became a British mandated territory after the First World War. 1920, Britain divided Palestine into two parts with the Jordan River as the boundary. In the east, it is called Outer Jordan (now the Kingdom of Jordan), and in the west, it is still called Palestine (now Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip) as a British trust territory. /kloc-At the end of 0/9, a large number of Jews moved into Palestine under the instigation of the "Zionist Movement", seized the land of Palestinian Arabs and had bloody conflicts with them.

1947, the United Nations general assembly adopted "United Nations general assembly resolution 18 1" (33 votes in favor, 13 votes against, 10 abstentions), which stipulated the establishment of two independent States in Palestine, and the resolution stipulated 57% of the total area of Palestine. This resolution is extremely unfair to Arabs. The Arab countries only have six votes, which is beyond redemption. The Jews agreed to this resolution, and the State of Israel was established in 1948. The Arabs opposed the resolution and did not establish an Arab country.

On May 1948, the day after the founding of Israel, Israel occupied more than 6,200 square kilometers of land allocated to Palestine and forcibly occupied West Jerusalem. At that time, King Abdullah of Jordan occupied the territory of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and allocated it to Palestine, covering an area of 5,268 square kilometers. In the Third Middle East War (1967), Israel occupied the West Bank and Gaza, as well as the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt, the Syrian Golan Heights with an area of 1600 square kilometers and the Gaza under the jurisdiction of Egypt. It also seized East Jerusalem from Jordan and declared the whole of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel (unrecognized). In the Fourth Middle East War from 65438 to 0973, the Arab countries intended to retake the occupied territories by force, while Israel relied on the strong support of the United States and advanced weapons and equipment, and finally repelled the Arab countries' attacks after hard fighting. During the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, Israel occupied a narrow strip with the width of 10 ~ 15 km in southern Lebanon. /kloc-At the end of 0/9, many Jews living in Europe, influenced by Zionism, began to buy swamps, wetlands and desert land in Canaan from the sultans of the Ottoman Empire or the enfeoffment. After Jewish immigrants moved in, they gradually gathered on collective farms. Tel Aviv was the largest Jewish city at that time.

Before World War I, the Middle East had been ruled by the Ottoman Empire for more than 500 years. In order to carry out the policy of racial discrimination, the Turks in power began to encourage Turks in China to apply for blood identity certificates, thus reducing the rights and interests of Arabs. The Allies put forward the guarantee that Arabs and Jews could be independent and autonomous from the Ottoman Empire, which was later supported by the two peoples, and Arab nationalism gradually rose at this time.

The British Empire published the Balfour Declaration in 19 17, supporting "the Israelis to establish their own state in Palestine", but "the human rights and religious belief rights of other ethnic groups living in this area shall not be harmed or violated". This declaration is regarded as the result of the leaders of the British Empire, including the then Prime Minister David Lloyd George, who believed that the support of the Jewish nation was an indispensable force to win the war, but it also caused an uneasy influence in the Arab world. After the end of World War I, the Ottoman Empire collapsed, and Britain obtained the right of appointment and trusteeship in parts of the Middle East, namely, Israel, Jordan, the West Bank and Gaza.

The number of Israeli immigrants in Palestine has been increasing. By the end of 193 1, 17% of the Palestinian population was Jewish, 6% more than that of 1922 ten years ago. During the Nazi Party's rule in Germany, the number of Jewish immigrants reached its peak, and even increased exponentially in a few years. Many Arabs living in Palestine regard this as a threat, because many Jewish authorities encourage the purchase of land in large quantities and prohibit Jewish landlords or enterprises from hiring Arabs. This move quickly angered the local Arab community. 1965-1In the early 1920s, protests and demonstrations continued, opposing the British Empire's appointment of a government to protect Jewish immigrants and ignoring the rights and interests of non-Jews. The first violent conflict took place in Trahai in March of 1920, and broke out again in Jerusalem the following year. Winston Churchill published Churchill's White Statement, trying to calm the anger of the Arab nation and explaining that the intention of the Balfour Declaration was not to help Jews establish a Jewish state. In the Palestinian uprising of 1929, Zion's revisionist leader z? Bertard, a political group founded by Gabotinsky, marched at the Western Wall, spreading the riots from Jerusalem to the whole of Palestine. The Arabs then retaliated and killed 67 Jews in Hebron, which was the Hebron massacre in 1929. The uprising * * * caused 65,438+065,438+06 Arabs and 65,438+033 Jews to die and 339 people were injured, but the unstable tension caused the uprising of 65,438+0936 Arab People's Congress to last for three years in Palestine.

In the Jewish-only buses in the 1930 s, the windows were covered with barbed wire to stop stones, broken glass or grenades thrown into the car from the outside.

In response to the pressure exerted by Arabs, the British Empire appointed the government to control the number and upper limit of Jewish immigrants until the end of the mandate. However, during the ban, the German Nazi Party began to carry out ethnic cleansing in Europe, which led to a large number of Jewish refugees illegally moving into Palestine, and the sharp increase in population made the ethnic opposition in the region more serious. The British government's subsequent diplomatic intervention also ended in failure, and it could only turn to the newly established United Nations organization for help. On May 1947, the United Nations convened a special committee whose judges were assembled from 1 1 different countries, even to maintain the neutrality of the committee, instead of selecting representatives from the world powers.

After five weeks of on-the-spot investigation, the Committee suggested that a separate piece of land with obvious territorial area be divided in Palestine for Jews and Arabs to govern separately. This proposal of "two-way governance" was approved by the United Nations Parliament, and voted on June 1947 1 1 in the name of General Assembly resolution 18 1. The proposal received 33 votes in favour and 13 votes against. Arab countries formed the League of Arab States to express their dissatisfaction with the voting results. At this time, the conflict in Palestine became more intense, and both sides even publicly used tyrannical means to retaliate against each other.

A few months before the end of the British Mandate, Haganah, the predecessor of the current Israel Defense Forces, launched a series of military attacks on Arabs and took the initiative to capture the future Jewish-ruled Palestinian areas. Military operations have caused a large number of Arab refugees, but the Israelis have gained major towns such as Tiberias, Haifa and Zephyr.

1948, 14 In May, Israel officially declared its independence and had sovereignty over the area designated as a Jewish state by the United Nations. The next day, the Arab League reiterated its opposition to the "two-state solution" in a letter to the United Nations. On the same day, Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Iraq attacked the regional borders designated for Arab countries, and the first Israeli-Arab war broke out immediately. The Israeli army repelled the Arab army in some areas and extended the border beyond the original Jewish state. From 1948 to 12, Israel occupied most (77%) of Palestinian land west of the Jordan River, and the rest was controlled by Jordan and Egypt. So far, Palestine has been unable to establish a country. Before and during the war, 765,438+065,438+0,000 Arab Palestinians fled their homes and became refugees, which began with the retaliatory slaughter of Arab villages by Jewish radical groups such as the National Army and Stern Group. Arab leaders promised Arab refugees before the war that they could return home after the Arab victory. The war lasted until 1949, and Israel signed an armistice agreement with its neighbors. The ceasefire line is called the green line.

David Ben-Gurion, the first Israeli Prime Minister, accepted the United Nations proposal that "Palestinians should be ruled by both sides", but he mentioned in his letter to his wife:

"

..... An "incomplete" Jewish state is just the beginning, and I intend to organize a powerful military force to resist the expansion and aggression of other countries.

"

-David Ben-Gurion's Letter to Paula and the Children 1948 After the war, the situation of Jews in Arab countries was even worse. A large number of Jews were forced to leave Arab countries, and some left voluntarily for ideological reasons. From 1948 to 1952, more than 700,000 Jews immigrated to Israel, of which about 285,000 came from Arab countries.

After the Six-Day War of 1967, more than 850,000 Jews left ten Arab countries. Riots broke out in Yemen and Syria, killing hundreds of Jews; Libya revoked Jewish nationality and Iraq confiscated Jewish property. These Jews who were forced to leave later account for about 40% of Israel's population today.

1956, Egypt imposed a blockade on Israeli maritime transport in straits of tiran. On July 26th of the same year, Egypt nationalized the Suez Canal Company, and prohibited ships travelling to and from Israel from using the canal. Israel took action on 1956 10/29 October and invaded Sinai Peninsula with the support of Britain and France. Israeli occupied Gaza and Sinai Peninsula in Suez Canal crisis. The United States and the United Nations immediately pressed for a ceasefire agreement; Israel agreed to withdraw from Egyptian territory, while Egypt agreed to free navigation in the region and demilitarize Sinai Peninsula. The United Nations Emergency Force (UNEF) was established to supervise the demilitarization of both sides. But Israel refused to deploy UN troops in its territory, so they only deployed UN troops on the Egyptian border.

1967 On May19, Egypt expelled the UN Emergency Force observers and mobilized100000 troops to Sinai Peninsula. Egypt once again imposed a blockade on Israeli shipping in straits of tiran, bringing the region back to the state it was in when it imposed a blockade on Israel in 1956. 1967 On May 30th, Jordan and Egypt signed a common defense agreement. Egypt mobilized its troops in Sinai to March on the southern border of Israel. Israel decided to strike first. On June 5, it dispatched the air force to attack Egypt, destroying most of the military forces of the Egyptian air force. The air raid gave Israel a chance to win the Six-Day War. At the end of the war, Israel occupied the Gaza Strip, Sinai Peninsula, East Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Golan Heights. The geopolitical influence of this war continues to this day. After 1974, Egypt and Jordan, which lost their territories because of the war with Israel, chose to conduct political negotiations with Israel based on their own interests. Subsequently, with the mediation and assistance of the United States, Israel and Egypt signed a peace treaty in March 1979 according to the Camp David Agreement. It stipulates that the Sinai Peninsula will be returned to Egypt and the Gaza will remain under Israeli control, which will include the future Palestinian state. The agreement also allows Israeli ships to freely pass through the Suez Canal and recognizes straits of tiran and the Gulf of Aqaba as international waterways. 1982 Israel officially returned the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt.

1994 10 in June, Jordan signed a peace agreement with Israel. Jordan is also the second Arab country to establish normal diplomatic relations with Israel after Egypt.

1988 after the founding of Palestine, Yasser Arafat decided to hold peace talks with Israel. On September 1993, the Oslo Agreement was signed, allowing Palestinians to gain autonomy in the West Bank and Gaza within five years. Israeli Prime Minister Rabin, Arafat and Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres won the Nobel Peace Prize of 1994. The agreement established the Palestinian Authority with Arafat as its first head. From 65438 to 0995, after Rabin was assassinated, the peace process came to a standstill. 15 Israeli civilians were killed and 130 people were injured. Hamas called it revenge for the killing of two commanders.

In 2005, Syria withdrew its troops from Lebanon, ending its 30-year military occupation of Lebanon. In the same year, Israel also withdrew from the Gaza Strip], but in 2007, Hamas immediately took control of the Gaza Strip and two regimes, namely the Palestine Liberation Organization, which controlled the West Bank. Since then, Israeli control over Gaza's borders has been strengthened, and restrictions on the entry and exit of people and goods have been strengthened. The BBC reported that Gaza has become poorer, the unemployment rate remains high, only basic humanitarian supplies can enter Gaza, the export almost stops, and the economy is paralyzed.

At the same time, in July 2006, Hezbollah fighters attacked the Israeli army from the Lebanese border, eight Israeli troops were killed and two others were captured, which triggered the 2006 Israel-Lebanon conflict and caused serious damage to Lebanon. The ceasefire agreement brokered by the United Nations came into effect on August 6th, 2006. More than 65,438+0,000 people were killed in this conflict, most of them Lebanese civilians, and Lebanon's civil infrastructure was severely damaged. About 654.38 million Lebanese and 300,000 to 500,000 Israelis were displaced, but most of them were able to return home after the conflict.

On September 6, 2007, Israel destroyed an unfinished building suspected of a nuclear reactor in eastern Syria.

In April 2008, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad told a Qatari newspaper that Syria and Israel had started to discuss a peace treaty in the past year, with Turkey as the middleman. A spokesman for the Israeli Prime Minister confirmed the news in May of the same year. Besides the peace agreement, the future of the Golan Heights was also discussed.

On August 26th, 2008, US Secretary of State condoleezza rice criticized that building more Israeli settlements in the West Bank would harm the peace process.

The six-month ceasefire between Hamas and Israel expired on 65438+February 19, 2008, and the attempt to extend the ceasefire failed. After the ceasefire, Israel attacked a tunnel suspected of being used to attack Israeli troops, and several Hamas members were killed. Hamas resumed firing mortars and rockets at Israeli towns. On February 24th alone, it fired more than 60 rockets, totaling 65,438. On February 27th, 65438, Israel launched the Gaza War to attack Hamas. Human rights groups and aid organizations accused Israel and Hamas of committing war crimes, and called for an independent investigation and re-examination of whether to continue to sell weapons to Israel. This conflict ended on June 65438+10/October 65438+August 2009.

From June 5438 to February 2009, Israel indicated its intention to build 700 more houses in East Jerusalem. The United States criticized the move as a blow to peace talks with Palestine. The Palestinian side postponed negotiations with Israel until Israel stopped building new settlements in areas that Palestinians identified as belonging to Palestine.