What is the root of the Palestinian-Israeli problem?

The key to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict

The main topics of the Palestinian-Israeli peace talks are the status of Jerusalem, the demarcation of borders, the return of Palestinian refugees, Jewish settlements and water resources.

For a long time, Israel has built a large number of Jewish settlements in the occupied Arab territories. In the West Bank and Gaza, 200 Israeli settlements have been established, with/kloc-0.04 million Jewish immigrants. Israel's Jewish immigration policy tries to establish a great Israeli state from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean by changing the population structure of the occupied Arab territories.

According to the statistics of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, there are currently about 26 million refugees in the world, and Palestinian refugees are the largest refugee group, with a total of nearly 3.5 million. It has been 52 years since the first generation of refugees appeared, nearly three generations. According to Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics 1996, there are about 4.7 million refugees.

The issue of Jerusalem is the most crucial and thorny issue in the Palestinian-Israeli peace talks. The issue of Jerusalem refers to the sovereignty and ownership of Jerusalem. Jerusalem is located in the middle of Palestine in the West Bank, with an area of 176 square kilometers and a population of 650,000. It is the holy land of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. The whole city consists of two parts: the old city and the new city. There are many religious sites in the Old City of East Jerusalem, which is the main residential area for Palestinians, including 33 Arab villages with 654.38 million Arabs. New City West Jerusalem was gradually built after19th century, mainly in Jewish residential areas.

East Jerusalem and West Jerusalem, which make up the whole city of Jerusalem, are not a concept of administrative division, but a concept of politics, geography and even nationality. After the end of the First Middle East War, Jerusalem, which was originally designated as an international city by the United Nations, was divided into two parts from north to south by the ceasefire line between the Arab and Israeli sides. The Eastern District was occupied by Jordan (then called Outer Jordan) and the Western District was occupied by Israel. The ceasefire line dividing East Jerusalem and West Jerusalem is also called "Green Line" because it is green on the map of Israel. Before the founding of Israel, a large number of Jewish immigrants lived in the newly developed West Jerusalem, so West Jerusalem was also called the Jewish settlement. East Jerusalem was once the absolute advantage of Arabs, so it was called the Arab quarter. 1950 Israel declared the occupation of West Jerusalem as its capital. Israel seized East Jerusalem in 1967, and passed a bill in July 1980, declaring the unified Jerusalem as the "eternal and indivisible" capital of Israel, but it has never been recognized by the international community. On February 4th, the United Nations passed a resolution declaring Jerusalem the illegal capital.

According to the agreement signed by Palestine and Israel in 1993, the Jerusalem issue will be resolved in the final status negotiations between Palestine and Israel. Until then, neither party can take unilateral actions to change the status quo. However, Israel still insists that Jerusalem is its "unified and eternal capital" and continues to carry out the plan of building Jewish settlements in East Jerusalem. After the final status negotiations between Palestine and Israel started in September 1999, the two sides held dozens of rounds of open and secret negotiations on the status of Jerusalem, but they could not overcome the huge differences on this issue. Especially in July, 2000, because of the great differences between Palestine and Israel on the final status of Jerusalem, the Palestinian-Israeli summit at Camp David failed to reach an agreement. The Palestinian side insists that according to UN Resolution 242, Israel must withdraw from East Jerusalem occupied in the 1967 war. Therefore, sharing Jerusalem with Israel or recovering East Jerusalem is the unchangeable bottom line of Palestinian negotiations. Without East Jerusalem, Israel will never sign a permanent peace agreement to end the state of war.