How did the current situation between Palestine and Israel come into being

Since October 7, 2023, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict has been heating up like never before, which has far-reaching implications for the two sides and even the Middle East region. As the longest lasting regional hot spot in the modern Middle East, the Palestinian-Israeli issue has always failed to achieve peace and stability. Here, it is necessary to systematically sort out the context of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict from a historical perspective.

Historical origin: Both peoples once lived on the same land

As early as 1300 BC, the Jews left Egypt and settled in Canaan (present-day Palestine), establishing the Hebrew Kingdom in 1028 BC. In the 2nd century AD, a Jewish rebellion led to the expulsion of a large number of Jews from the Roman Empire, and the gradual entry of Arabs into the region. In the 7th century, after the founding of Islam by Muhammad, the most powerful Arab political and military organization, the Umma, was established for the first time, and began the process of foreign expansion and eventually the conquest of the region from the Eastern Roman Empire. Since then, Arabs have become the dominant ethnic group in the region. This complicated history has led to the strong territorial claims of the two major ethnic groups in the Palestinian area. The Palestinian territories are considered by Israelis to be the land God promised them, the so-called “Promised Land,” by Arabs to be their nation’s undisputed land, and by both sides Jerusalem is regarded as the “Holy City” that cannot be lost.
Since the 19th century, a large number of Jews immigrated to Palestine to escape the persecution of the Europeans, and gradually formed “Zionism”. Arab nationalism in the Palestinian territories began to rise after World War I. In fact, a large number of Arabs arrived in the Palestinian territories only in the 20th century because of the employment provided by Jewish businesses. On the whole, Arabs were the main ethnic group in Palestine during this period.

Outside intervention: Britain’s support for Israel’s statehood sowed the seeds of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict

On November 2, 1917, British Foreign Secretary Balfour announced that Britain had agreed to establish a “national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine. This is known in history as the Balfour Declaration. On the face of it, the Balfour Declaration contained two commitments: one to the Zionists and one to the Palestinian Arabs. In practice, the two commitments contradict each other. Three years before the Balfour Declaration, Britain had promised the Arabs the right to a state and political freedom. But Balfour’s promises to the Arabs were only for show. The Balfour Declaration gave a shot in the arm to European Zionists, prompting a mass exodus of Jews to the Palestinian territories, thus paving the way for the establishment of Israel in the Arab territories.
There were two main reasons for Britain to put forward the Balfour Declaration: Russia’s war support for the Allies was wavering at the time, and Britain needed the support of Russian Jews to force Russia to continue the war; In the long term, it was to strengthen the defense of the Suez Canal with the help of the Jews. More importantly, the creation of Israel in the Middle East served as a brake on the growth of Arab nationalism. Britain encouraged the creation of a Jewish state, and used Jews as spokesmen in the Middle East, with the aim of creating chaos and division in the Arab world and ensuring Britain’s long-term control over the Middle East, a strategically vital region. The British government predicted that the creation of a Jewish homeland in Palestine would mean both peoples claiming the same land, making conflict between settlers and Palestinians inevitable. Such a conflict “would greatly benefit the British strategy of divide-and-rule against the Zionists and the local Arabs, thereby securing their control of the Suez Canal.” On the eve of the outbreak of World War II, Britain, in order to win over the Arabs, turned to restricting the immigration of Jews to Palestine. On May 17, 1939, the British government issued the White Paper on Palestine, which stipulated that no more than 75,000 Jews could emigrate within five years and that no more immigration permits would be issued. This appeased the Arabs to some extent, but angered the Jews. The Zionists stopped looking to Britain and turned to the United States as their new patron.
The United States, for its own sake, has also come to Israel’s side. The United States was the first to recognize Israel after its declaration of statehood in 1948. During the Cold War, the United States used Israel as a front-line bulwark against the expansion of the Soviet Union and Arab nationalism, providing it with substantial economic and military aid. Over the years, Israel has received $3.8 billion annually from the U.S. Treasury Department, the largest recipient of U.S. aid. According to the Congressional Research Service, the United States provided $233.7 billion in aid to Israel between 1948 and 2012. Thanks to the full support of the United States, Israel has repeatedly won the confrontation with the Arab states and has been able to feel safe in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The Arab world is divided: The Palestinian cause cannot survive alone

In November 1947, the United Nations issued the United Nations Resolution 181 on the partition of Palestine and Israel. Under the agreement, which ended British mandate rule in Palestine in 1948, separate “Arab” and “Jewish” states were to be established in the territories. The “Arab State” occupies 43% of the total area of the Palestinian territory, and the “Jewish State” occupies 57% of the total area of the Palestinian territory. The plan was strongly opposed by the Arabs, who believed that the land allocated to the Arabs was mostly barren, and even denied the legitimacy of the existence of a “Jewish state”. The day after the creation of Israel, the Arab coalition of Egypt, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon attacked Israel in an attempt to eliminate the “Jewish state” directly. As a result, the Arab states have failed miserably, with Israel seizing four-fifths of the entire Palestinian territory, with the exception of Gaza and parts of the West Bank. At this point, the plan of the United Nations Resolution 181 was completely in vain. Since before, Palestine was a regional concept rather than the name of any country, since the first Middle East War, the “Arab state” has never been formally established, which actually means that the Palestinian issue as an important international issue and the core issue of the Middle East began to officially enter the international vision.
Since then, several Middle East wars have broken out between Arab countries and Israel. In particular, after the Third Middle East War in 1967, Israel occupied Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, Syria’s Golan Heights, the West Bank, Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip, totaling 65,000 square kilometers of land. Large numbers of Palestinian refugees were driven from their homes, and the internationally known “1967 borders” now refer to Israel’s territory before the war. And, as a result of the defeat of the war, Arab nationalism gradually faded from the stage of history. Since then, although the Fourth Middle East War (Yom Kippur War) broke out in 1973, some Arab countries have recovered part of their territory, and the Arab world has also put forward the principle of “no recognition, no negotiation, and no reconciliation” with Israel, but since Egypt made peace with Israel in 1979, the land issue and the Jerusalem issue, which are the most concerned of Palestinians, have become the most important issue. And the question of territories occupied by Israel in other Arab countries has not been resolved. This means a huge split in the anti-Israel united front in the Arab world, which casts a shadow over the Palestinian liberation cause.
Arab nationalism waned, and the task of liberating Palestine fell to the Palestinians themselves. In December 1987, the Palestinian religious leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin proposed the formation of an “Islamic Resistance Movement” (” Hamas “). On 15 November 1988, the 19th meeting of the Palestinian National Council proclaimed the establishment of the State of Palestine, with Jerusalem as its capital and the presidential Palace and other major government departments located in Ramallah. So far, the “Arab-Israeli contradiction” has gradually transformed into the “Palestinian-Israeli problem”.
In the subsequent Palestinian-Israeli game, Israel once accepted the “land for peace” agreement, and the two sides finally signed the Oslo Agreement under the mediation of the United States. According to the agreement between Israel and Palestine, the Palestinian side has limited autonomy in Gaza, Jericho and other places. Since then, the legal Palestinian control area has been gradually expanded and now includes all of the Gaza Strip and parts of the West Bank, with a total area of about 2,500 square kilometers. However, Israel still controls many parts of the West Bank and continues to expand Jewish settlements in the area, the West Bank is divided into fragmented land by Jewish settlements, and the Palestinians are subjected to “apartheid” and tightly controlled by the Israeli police.

“Strong and weak” : The Palestinian-Israeli conflict is getting out of control

As far as the Palestinian-Israeli game is concerned, there is an unbalanced development situation in the balance of power between the two sides, Israel dominates and Palestine is weakening, which leads to the main theme of the relationship between the two sides from “peace” to “conflict”.
Since the beginning of the 21st century, the United States launched the “war on terror” in the Middle East and overthrew Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq, thus helping Israel remove a worry. After the 2011 Middle East upheaval, with the collapse of regimes and even full-scale civil wars in Egypt, Libya, Syria and other countries, Israel’s security environment in the Middle East has improved unprecedenously. At the same time, intra-Palestinian infighting between Fatah and Hamas intensified. In 2007, an armed conflict between Hamas and Fatah led to the expulsion of Fatah forces from Gaza, and Fatah subsequently established a Palestinian government without Hamas in the West Bank. Since then, the Palestinians have split, with Hamas controlling Gaza and Fatah controlling (part of) the West Bank. This makes the Palestinian side even weaker. In addition, in recent years, Arab countries such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have sought to ease relations with Israel and cooperate with the United States’ strategic containment of Iran. In this context, the question of Palestine has gradually been marginalized. The Arab states regard the Iranian nuclear issue as the core issue of the region. Palestine cannot stand alone without the “backing” of a united Arab world.
In the context of “strong Israel and weak Palestine” and the lack of strong foreign aid, Israel has gradually changed its “land for peace” policy and increasingly hardened its policy toward Palestine, especially by constantly building illegal settlements in Palestinian areas and encroaching on Palestinian land. The conflict between Israel and Hamas is one after another. On December 27, 2008, Israel fought Hamas in the Gaza Strip, known as the Gaza War. Since then, the main contradiction between Israel and the Palestinians has been more clearly transformed from the contradiction with the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Palestinian National Authority to the contradiction with the Hamas forces in the Gaza Strip. Both Hamas and Israel deny the other’s right to exist and want to destroy it. There have been many violent clashes between the two sides.
Within the Palestinians, as the two-state solution continues to fail to be implemented, popular support for the Abbas government is gradually declining, and the West Bank population, faced with Israel’s increasingly extreme dynamics, is turning to the equally increasingly extreme Hamas, and the conflict between Israel and Hamas is spiraling. In 2014 and 2021, Israel carried out large-scale military operations in the Gaza Strip. Since Netanyahu returned to power, Israel has stepped up its encroachment on land in the West Bank. The “Al-Aqsa Flood” operation launched by Hamas in 2023 is the latest manifestation of the conflict between the two sides.