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Old 08-18-2005, 06:55 PM
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Godless Dave Godless Dave is offline
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Default Re: Help me understand the Israel/Palestine conflict

Quote:
Originally Posted by LadyShea
Since Palestine was also a "created" country, why did they get so pissed at Israel being created?
Because the Palestinians were already living there, while almost all of the Jews who formed Israel immigrated there from Europe and the US. The Zionism movement began, I think, towards the beginning of the 20th Century, but after WWII it really took off, because it was clear that Jews were not safe in countries where they were the minority. Stalin had basically reinstituted the pograms of imperial Russia (but on an even larger scale), and we all know what happened in Germany.

And I don't think Palestine was really a nation-state at that time; it was governed by (I think) the UK under a League of Nations mandate. The Arab world was still mostly dominated by colonial powers at that time; the UK and France helped them break free from the Ottoman Empire during WWI, but then tried to install their own puppet governments. The Brits, by proxy, ruled Iraq and what is now Saudi Arabia in addition to Palestine. So I'm sure there was a lot of resentment among Arabs when Palestine, where Arabs were living, was "given" to Jews immigrating from Europe. Ethnic and religous bigotry helped turn this resentment into hatred.

By the time Israel declared itself a nation-state, neighboring Arab countries were independent enough to declare war on it. That was the 1948 war. The Arabs lost and the borders of Israel were pretty much established. There was another war in 1967, when Syria, Jordan, and Egypt attacked Israel, and that's where Israel captured the West Bank and East Jerusalem from Jordan, Gaza Strip from Egypt, and the Golan Heights from Syria. Israel claimed it needed to hold onto them as a strategic buffer zone. But right from the start there were some Israelis who just wanted to annex them outright. That's where the settlement movement came from.

Also in the 1967 war, many Arabs within Israel fled, either to avoid being killed by the Arab countries they were rooting for or in fear of Israeli reprisals. Many ended up in refugee camps in neighboring countries and in the West Bank. That's where the "right of return" concept comes from; some Palestinians think those refugees and their descendants should have to right to return to Israel proper and reclaim their property. Other Arabs (and people like me) think they should be able to return to the West Bank or Gaza and be compensated by Israel for property they lost (as Jews whose property was confiscated by the Nazis were compensated by Germany and Austria).

No country but Israel recognizes their claim to any of the occupied territories. Some Israelis want to give it all back, some want to keep it as a military buffer zone but not let Israelis settle there, some want to annex part of it, and some want to annex all of it.
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