The Israel Palestine Conflict and its Solution
Introduction:
One hundred years ago, a regional conflict began that became one of the world's most complex and controversial. A conflict between two very different people for the same territory. Around then, the region along the eastern Mediterranean we now call Israel-Palestine had been under the Ottoman rule for centuries. It was diverse in the context of religion, comprising most Muslims and Christians but also a few Jews. They were living peacefully.And it was changing with the two alterations. Firstly, more people in the region of Palestine developed a sense of being a distinct national identity. Meanwhile, Jews started a movement called Zionism. According to Zionism, Judaism is a nationality, not only a religion. So, it deserved a nation of its own. And they saw their historic native land in the Middle East as their last hope for founding the Jewish state for them.
How Jews entered the state of Palestine?
In the initial decades of the 20th century, thousands of European Jews relocated there. During WW1, British foreign affairs minister Arthur Balfour wrote an open letter promising a Jewish homeland in Palestine in return for support from the growing Zionist movement. At the same time, the British strived to debilitate the Ottoman Empire by subsidizing the Arab insurgents and promising them independent territories.
At the end of the war, the Ottoman Empire collapsed, and the British and French Empires carved up the Middle East, with the British taking control of a region which is called the British Mandate for Palestine. At first, the British allowed Jewish immigration. But as more Jews started settling into farming communities, the anxiety between Jews and Arabs grew. Both sides committed acts of violence. And at the end of the 1930s, the British began restraining. In response, the Jewish army formed to combat the local Arabs and to restrain British rule as well. Then the Holocaust came, which became the reason for fleeing more Jews from Europe to British Palestine and urging more world to support Zionism.
In 1947, as unrest between Arabs and Jews grew, the United Nations approved an idea to dissect British Palestine: one for Jews, Israel, and one for Arabs, Palestine. The city of Jerusalem, where Jews, Muslims, and Christians all have Holy places, was to become a special international zone. The motive of the plan was to give Jews a state, to set up Palestinian independence, and to terminate the sectarian violence that the British could no longer control. The Jews accepted the decision made by the UN and announced liberty as Israel. But Arabs across the region saw the UN decision as just more European colonialism attempting to snatch their land.
Occupation of Israel:
Many of the Arab states, who had just recently won independence themselves, declared war on Israel to establish a unified Arab Palestine where all of British Palestine had been. The new state of Israel won the war. But in the process, they occupied more area than the UN planned, taking the western half of Jerusalem and a lot of the land that was to be part of Palestine. They also banished large numbers of Palestinians from their homes, generating a huge refugee population whose descendants are about 7 million. At the end of the war, Israel occupied all of the territories apart from Gaza, which Egypt occupied, and the West Bank which Jordan controlled, named after the name River Jordan; as it is situated at the west side of the River.
Beginning of the conflict:
This was the initiation of the decades-long Arab-Israeli conflict. During this period, many Jews in Arab-majority countries were expelled and arrived in Israel. Then something happened that transformed the conflict. In 1967, Israel and the neighboring Arab countries battled another war. Within six days, Israel had seized the Golan Heights from Syria, the West Bank from Jordan, and both Gaza and the Sinai Peninsula from Egypt. Israel was annexing the Palestinian territories, together with all of Jerusalem and its Holy places. Then UN reacted and adopted resolution 242 deploring the occupation of Israel.
After six years, Egypt and Syria launched a surprise attack to try to recover the occupied land. At first, the Israeli army was routed and failed to repulse the attack. Under the influence of the Cold War, the Soviet Union and Arab countries supported the aggressive one, whereas the United States dispatched emergency supplies of 22,000 tons of armament to Israel. With this boost, the Israeli army further pushed its borders. After a ceasefire, oil-exporting Arab countries decided to punish the US and Israel's allies by raising the price of oil by 70% and decreasing production by 5%. This caused the first oil crisis of 1973.
In 1978 Israel and Egypt approved the US-brokered Camp David Accords by signing. Shortly after that, Israel gave Sanai back to Egypt as part of a peace treaty and a part of the Golan to Syria but hold onto the Palestinian territories where colonization accelerated particularly in East Jerusalem. At the time this was massively controversial in the Arab world. Egypt President Anwar Sadat was executed in part because of his outrage against it. But it marked the initiation of the termination of the wider Arab-Israeli dispute.
During the next few decades, the other Arab countries slowly made peace with Israel, although they never signed formal peace treaties. But Israeli army was still occupying the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and Gaza, and at the moment dispute became an Israeli-Palestinian struggle. The Palestinian Liberation Organization, formed in the 1960s to go for a Palestinian state, fought against Israel, by all means, to get back its land.
At first, the PLO claimed all of British Palestine, meaning it wanted to terminate the state of Israel wholly. Fights between Israel and the PLO continued for years, even including the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon to cast the group out of Beirut. Afterward, the PLO said it would accept dissection, but the conflict went on. As all of this was happening, but Israelis were further moving in.
The migrated Israeli people are named settlers, and they built their homes in the West Bank and Gaza whether Palestinians were agreed or not. Some relocated for religious motives, some as they wanted to claim the land for Israel, and some due to reasonable housing and sometimes subsidized by the Israeli government. The settlers were followed by soldiers to protect them, and the growing settlements deprived Palestinians of their land. The occupation was very painful for Palestinians. Moreover, this dissection of land made it more difficult for the Palestinians to get freedom ever.
Today there are numerous thousands of settlers in the occupied territory even if the international community does not consider them legal. By the late 1980s, Palestinian anxiety erupted into the Intifada, which is the Arabic word meaning "uprising". It started with mostly protests and boycotts but afterward, it became violent, and Israel countered with heavy force. A couple of hundred Israelis and more than a thousand Palestinians died in the First Intifada.
Rise of Hamas:
Meanwhile, a group of Palestinians in Gaza, who considered the PLO too secular and too compromised minded, created Hamas, an Islamic Jihadist group dedicated to Israel's devastation. In the early 1990s, it was clear that Israelis and Palestinians have to ceasefire, and leaders of both states signed the Oslo Accords. This was meant to be the big move from Israel maybe someday withdraw from Palestine, and liberating it as a free state.
The Oslo Accords founded the Palestinian authority, allowing Palestinians a little bit of liberty to rule themselves in particular areas. Hard-liners on each side aversed the Oslo accords. Members of Hamas launched suicide bombings in an attempt to sabotage the process. The Israeli protested with ralliers declaring Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin as a traitor. Israeli killed Rabin in Tel Aviv after the second round of Oslo Accords.
It also laid the basis for introducing sovereignty in the Gaza Strip. In 1995, a West Bank partition plan was signed, providing for Palestine-controlled areas, mixed areas, and the rest under Israeli control. But the two parties were unable to agree on thorny issues, such as the status of Jerusalem and the return of Palestinian refugees.
Negotiations were meant to thrash out the ultimate details on peace drag on for years, and a huge Camp David Summit in 2000 came up empty. Palestinians believed that peace wasn't coming, and rose in a Second Intifada, this was more violent than the first. At the time, about 1,000 Israelis and 3,200 Palestinians have died. The Second Intifada really changed the dispute. Israelis became more distrustful about the acceptance of peace by Palestinians. Israeli politics shifted right, and the country built walls and checkpoints to control Palestinians' campaigns. They were not really trying to solve the dispute anymore, only to manage it.
The Palestinians were also left with the feeling that they are stuck under an escalating possession with no future as a nation. That year, Israel withdrew from Gaza. Hamas gained more power but disjoined from the Palestinian Dominion in a small civil war, splitting Gaza from the West Bank. Israel put Gaza under a suffocating obstruction. More and more settlements were suffocating Palestinians in the West Bank, who often responded with protests and sometimes with violence, though most just want normal lives. After so many years, Isreal continues to confiscate land and making the conditions more worst.
Several clashes took place and violence by both sides built up under 2014 when Israeli warplanes destroyed 50,000 houses, a hundred schools, dozens of hospitals, and the region's only power plant. The population stuck in Gaza confronted a humanitarian calamity. The condition remained intricated.
Involvement of US:
U.S taxpayers aid Israel $8 million per day on average. The U.S. has given more funds to Israel than to any other nation since its formation. As Americans have learned about how Israel is using their tax dollars, many are protesting to end this expenditure. All US presidents are hostage to a very powerful Jewish lobby. In 2018, the United States announced it would move its embassy to Jerusalem, recognizing the city as the capital of Israel. The UN denounced this decision with the majority, whereas the Palestinians declared that the United States has no longer playing the role of peacemaker which now seems indefinitely postponed.
Current Scenario:
Recently on 9 may, 2021 Israel attacked Masjid Al-Aqsa, where Muslims were offering Taraweeh on 27 Ramadan that is one of the blessed nights. Israeli Police stormed the mosque, firing rubber bullets, stun grenades, and tear gas. More than 300 Palestinians were wounded in this attack. Then Hamas countered back and warned Israel to stay away from the worshippers of masjid Alaqsa. But Israeli bombardment on Gaza is continued targeting the Palestinian territory in Gaza and residence buildings.
Today is the 18th of May, 2021, it is the 10th day of the unrest between Israeli and Palestinian. Israeli violence is continued in Palestine for decades till today. When it is going to stop? The US and some other countries are not condemning Israel for its worst behavior on Palestinians. They are just trying to prove the Palestinians as terrorists, whereas Hamas and other Islamic Jihadist groups are doing just in the context of their self-defense according to Chapter VII, Article 51 of the UN charter. This is the earthly law.
Now, look at the Divine law, which is ordered to all Muslims in such a situation.
فَمَنِ اعۡتَدٰی عَلَیۡکُمۡ فَاعۡتَدُوۡا عَلَیۡہِ بِمِثۡلِ مَا اعۡتَدٰی عَلَیۡکُمۡ ۪
جو تم پر زیادتی کرے تم بھی اس پر اسی کے مثل زیادتی کرو جو تم پر کی ہے
If infidels prevent the Muslims from going to Mosques/their worshiping places or they harm the Muslims during praying, then Muslims will counter back. If non-Muslims live peacefully with the Muslims, Muslims will also live peacefully. In the current scenario, Israel initiated the war by attacking the worshippers of Masjid Al-Aqsa. Palestinians are just attacking back for their self-defense.
The United nation and the US are not playing their role as neutral. They are just like puppets. US policy is lopsided and it creating further difficulties in resolving the main cause of the conflict between Israel and Palestine. Nothing was implemented from the peace deal which was signed with Palestinians in 1993. Israel occupied Palestine's land and is still occupying and annexing the land along with killing the innocent Palestinians.
In the nutshell, it is Israel who occupied the land. This possession is the real reason behind all evil. It is not the existence of Palestinians on their own land. It is not fair to blame the victim for everything that happened. The only solution to bring peace in Palestine is to liberate Palestine and Jews should evacuate Jerusalem. They can visit their temple, but can't occupy the Muslims' Qibla Awal.
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