Arab–Israeli conflict
Since 1948, conflict has existed between Israel and the surrounding Arab countries, rooted in Israel's presence in an area also claimed by Palestinian Arabs. The simultaneous rise of Zionism and Arab nationalism beginning late in the 19th century marked the beginning of the conflict, despite the long-term coexistence of Arab and Jewish peoples in lands that formed part of the Ottoman Empire. Zionists viewed the land as the Jewish ancestral homeland, while Arabs saw it as Arab Palestinian land and an essential part of the Islamic world.
By 1920, sectarian conflict had begun with the partition of Ottoman Syria in accord with the 1916 Sykes–Picot treaty between Britain and France that became the basis for the Mandate for Palestine and the 1917 promulgation of the Balfour Declaration that expressed British support for a Jewish homeland. The conflict escalated from an internal struggle with the 1948 establishment of Israel, in accordance with the United Nations General Assembly's adoption of the Partition Plan for Palestine. The day after the expiration of Mandatory Palestine and the Israeli Declaration of Independence, the Arab League launched the 1948 Arab–Israeli War that ended with formal partition along the Green Line. More wars followed in 1956, 1967, 1973, and 1982.
Several peace treaties and other diplomatic and economic accords were signed over the subsequent half-century. In 2002, the Arab League proposed the Arab Peace Initiative, although diplomatic activity between Israel and individual Arab countries involved ceasefires and later formal relations with some. By 2020, the Abraham Accords further calmed relations. Conflicts between Israel and various Palestinian factions ebbed and flowed, including the 1987–1993 First Intifada, Israel's intervention in the 1975–1990 Lebanese Civil War to oust the Palestine Liberation Organization from Lebanon, the 2000–2005 Second Intifada, the 2011–2024 Syrian civil war, and most recently the October 7 attacks in 2023 and ensuing Gaza war.
Background
National movements
The roots of the Arab–Israeli conflict lie in the tensions between Zionism and Palestinian nationalism. Territory regarded by the Jewish people as their historical homeland is considered by many Arabs as belonging to Palestinians. The area was under the control of the Ottoman Empire for nearly 400 years until its partitioning in the aftermath of the Great Arab Revolt during World War I. Approaching the end of their empire, the Ottomans began to assert the primacy of Turks within the empire, while discriminating against Arabs. The promise of liberation led many Jews and Arabs to support the allied powers during World War I, forging widespread Arab nationalism. Arab nationalism and Zionism began in Europe. The Zionist Congress started in Basel in 1897, while the Arab Club emerged in Paris in 1906.In the late 19th century Jewish communities began to migrate to Palestine, purchasing land from Ottoman landlords. The late 19th century population in Palestine reached 600,000 – mostly Muslim Arabs, with significant minorities of Jews, Christians, Druze and some Samaritan and Baháʼí. At that time, Jerusalem did not extend beyond the walled area and had a population of a few tens of thousands. Collective farms, known as kibbutzim, were established, as was the first entirely Jewish city in modern times, Tel Aviv.
During 1915–1916, as World War I was underway, the British High Commissioner in Egypt, Sir Henry McMahon, secretly corresponded with Husayn ibn 'Ali, the patriarch of the Hashemite family and Ottoman governor of Mecca and Medina. McMahon convinced Husayn to lead an Arab revolt against the Ottomans, which had aligned with Germany against Britain and France. McMahon promised that if the Arabs supported Britain in the war, the British government would support an independent Arab state under Hashemite rule in the Arab provinces of the Ottoman Empire, including Palestine. The Arab revolt, led by T. E. Lawrence and Husayn's son Faysal, was successful in defeating the Ottomans, and Britain took control over much of this area.
Sectarian conflict
First mandate years and the Franco-Syrian war
In 1917, Palestine was conquered by British forces. The British government issued the Balfour Declaration, which stated that the government viewed favorably "the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people" but "that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine". The Declaration was a result of the belief of key members of the government, including Prime Minister David Lloyd George, that Jewish support was essential to winning the war; however, the declaration upset the Arab world. After the war, the area came under British rule as the British Mandate of Palestine. The area mandated to the British in 1923 included what modern Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza Strip. Transjordan eventually was carved into a separate British protectorate – the Emirate of Transjordan, which gained autonomous status in 1928 and achieved independence in 1946 with United Nations approved end of the British Mandate.A major crisis among Arab nationalists took place with the failed establishment of the Arab Kingdom of Syria in 1920. With the disastrous outcome of the Franco-Syrian War, the self-proclaimed Hashemite kingdom with its capital in Damascus was defeated and the Hashemite ruler took refuge in Mandatory Iraq. The crisis saw the first confrontation Arab and Jewish forces in the Battle of Tel Hai in March 1920. More importantly the collapse of the pan-Arabist kingdom led to the establishment of the Palestinian flavor of Arab nationalism, with the return of Amin al-Husseini from Damascus to Jerusalem in late 1920.
Jewish immigration to Mandatory Palestine continued, accompanied by a similar, but less documented, migration in the Arab sector, returning workers from Syria and other areas. Palestinians considered this rapid influx of Jewish immigrants to threaten their homeland and their identity. Jewish policies of purchasing land and prohibiting the Arab employment in Jewish-owned industries and farms enraged Palestinian communities. Demonstrations were held as early as 1920, protesting what the Arabs felt were unfair preferences for Jewish immigrants in the British mandate. Violence broke out later that year in Jerusalem. Winston Churchill's 1922 White Paper tried to reassure the Arab population, denying that the creation of a Jewish state was the implication of the Balfour Declaration.
1929
, after a demonstration by Vladimir Jabotinsky's political group Betar at the Western Wall, riots started in Jerusalem and expanded throughout Mandatory Palestine; Arabs murdered 67 Jews in Hebron, in what became known as the Hebron massacre. During the week of the 1929 riots, at least 116 Arabs and 133 Jews were killed and 339 were wounded.1930s and 1940s
By 1931, 17 percent of the population of Mandatory Palestine were Jewish, an increase of six percent since 1922. Jewish immigration peaked soon after the Nazis came to power in Germany, doubling the Jewish population in Palestine.In the mid-1930s Izz ad-Din al-Qassam arrived from Syria and established the Black Hand, an anti-Zionist and anti-British militant organization. He recruited and arranged military training for peasants, and by 1935 he had enlisted between 200 and 800 men. The cells were equipped with bombs and firearms, which they used to kill Jewish settlers in the area, as well as engaging in a campaign of vandalism of Jewish settler plantations. By 1936, escalating tensions led to the 1936–1939 Arab revolt in Palestine.
In response to Arab pressure, the British Mandate authorities greatly reduced the number of Jewish immigrants to Palestine. These restrictions remained in place until the end of the mandate, which coincided with the Nazi Holocaust and the flight of Jewish refugees from Europe. As a consequence, most Jewish entrants to Mandatory Palestine were considered illegal, intensifying tensions. Following several failed diplomatic attempts to solve the problem, the British asked the United Nations for help. On 15 May 1947, the General Assembly appointed a committee, the UNSCOP, composed of representatives from eleven states. The US, the USSR and other major powers were not represented. After five weeks of in-country study, the Committee offered a majority and a minority plan. The majority proposed a Plan of Partition with Economic Union. The minority proposed The Independent State of Palestine. With only slight modifications, the former was adopted in resolution 181 of 29 November 1947. The Resolution was adopted by 33 votes to 13 with 10 abstentions. All six un-member Arab states voted no. On the ground, Arab and Jewish Palestinians fought to control strategic positions in the region. Major atrocities were committed by both sides.
Civil war
Just before the end of the mandate, the Haganah launched offensives in which they gained control over all the territory allocated by the UN to the Jewish State, creating a flood of refugees and capturing the towns of Tiberias, Haifa, Safad, Beisan and, in effect, Jaffa.Early in 1948 the United Kingdom announced its firm intention to terminate its mandate in Palestine on 14 May. In response, US President Truman made a statement on 25 March proposing UN trusteeship rather than partition, stating that:
History
1948 Arab–Israeli War
On 14 May 1948, the day on which the British Mandate expired, the Jewish People's Council gathered at the Tel Aviv Museum and approved a proclamation that declared the establishment of a Jewish state in Eretz Israel, to be known as the State of Israel.The borders of the new state were not delineated. An official cablegram from the Secretary-General of the League of Arab States to the UN Secretary-General on 15 May 1948 stated publicly that Arab Governments found "themselves compelled to intervene for the sole purpose of restoring peace and security and establishing law and order in Palestine". Further in Clause 10:
That day, the armies of Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Iraq invaded, launching the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. The nascent Israeli Defense Force repulsed the Arab forces, extending the nascent state's borders beyond the original UNSCOP partition. By December 1948, Israel controlled most of Mandate Palestine west of the Jordan River. The remainder of the Mandate consisted of what became the nation of Jordan, the area that came to be called the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip. Before and during this conflict, 713,000 Palestinian Arabs fled, becoming Palestinian refugees, in part due to a promise from Arab leaders that they would be able to return when the war had been won, and in part due to attacks on Palestinian villages and towns by Israeli forces and Jewish militants.
During the war, leaked Israeli documents stated that Israel conducted a biological warfare campaign codenamed Cast Thy Bread to covertly poison Palestinian wells to prevent villagers from returning. Many Palestinians fled from the areas taken by Israel as a response to massacres of Arab towns by militant Jewish organizations like the Irgun and the Lehi. The war came to an end with the signing of the 1949 Armistice Agreements between Israel and each of its Arab neighbors.
The status of Jewish citizens in Arab states worsened during the war. Anti-Jewish riots erupted throughout the Arab World in December 1947. Jewish communities were hit particularly hard in Aleppo, Syria and British-controlled Aden, with hundreds of dead and injured. In Libya, Jews were deprived of citizenship, and in Iraq, their property was seized. Egypt expelled most of its foreign community, including Jews, after the Suez crisis in 1956, while Algeria deprived its French citizens, including Jews, of citizenship upon its independence in 1962. Over the course of twenty years, some 850,000 Jews from Arab countries emigrated.