Transcript Arab-Israeli Conflict

Palestine in Dispute
A Short History of the Arab-Israeli
Conflict
Early 20th Century:
In the beginning of the conflict…
• Palestine was home to 60,000 Jews and
683,000 Arabs.
• More and more Jews were leaving Europe
to come to Palestine as they fled antiSemitism.
• Most of Palestine’s Jews were Orthodox
Jews who lived in the cities, and they were
left alone by the Arabs.
The British promised Arabs…
An independent Arab state in exchange
for Arab support against the Ottoman
Empire during the First World War.
This was called the Husayn-McMahon
understanding.
The British promised Jews…
Support for a “Jewish national home
in Palestine”.
This was called the Balfour
Declaration.
The British Mandate…
The British took the
mandate because they
wanted…
 Secure trade routes
through the Middle
East
 Oil from Arab wells
 Safety while
trading with Arabs
 Money from Arab
markets
Just after WWII, Jews flocked to Palestine, hoping to finally escape the
anti-Semitism that had plagued them throughout Europe.
Jewish settlement in the West Bank
This massive migration created tensions between Arabs and Jews as
Jews formed new settlements in traditionally Arab lands.
But after the horrors of WWII, the British were tired of violence, and
there was plenty of violence in Palestine…
When Britain left Palestine in 1948, Jews declared Israel an
independent nation under the UN’s Palestine partition plan,
and kicked out the Arabs living on Jewish-owned land…
Palestinian children in schools
for refugees forced to leave
Israeli land
Palestinian refugee camp
Arab nations
backed the
refugees, and
Israel went to
war to protect its
existence---Four
times.
1956
1948
1967
1973
Attempts at peace between Israel and the
Palestinians were made…
• (1967) UN Security
Council Resolution
242: Israel must give up
lands taken in the SixDay War.
• (1977) Egypt’s President
Anwar el-Sadat visited
Jerusalem and
addressed the Israeli
Knesset.
• (1978) Sadat and Israel’s
Prime Minister
Menachem Begin
negotiated the Camp
David Accords under
Pres. Jimmy Carter’s
guidance.
• (1979) Sadat signed a
peace treaty with Begin
But Sadat was assassinated in 1981.
In 1987, the PLO, under the leadership of Yasir Arafat,
launched the Intifada.
Yasir Arafat
Palestinian gunmen
Smoke rising over Bethlehem
Palestinian throwing a tear gas canister
There have been other attempts at
peace since then…
• Yitzhak Rabin, Yasir Arafat, and King Hussein of
Jordan held talks about the future of the Palestinian
people 1993-1994.
• The Palestinian National Authority was created
in 1994 as a way for Palestinians to gain limited
self-government.
But Palestinians
continue to
protest in their
own ways
against Israel’s
monopoly on the
Holy Land.
It seems that Palestinians’ most consistent recourse
has been to use terrorism. This is a chart showing the
number of terrorist attacks in the Middle East by year.
Even though
most Arabs
and Israelis
seem to
want peace,
that goal
will be
reached
only after a
very long
time, and at
great cost in
human life.
At an Israeli army checkpoint, a
Palestinian is searched for explosives.
The only question left to ask is:
“How can we help?”
The End