How did the Israel and Palestinian problem originated?

Answer 1

The "problem" has its roots in the 7th Century with the original jihads of Mohammed. Then again with the fall of the Ottoman Empire -- which had backed the Germans in World War I -- and the imposition of colonial domination, League of Nations mandates, and independent nationhood in the Middle East.

Like, in a sense, Jehovah's Witnesses, Muslim theology does not acknowledge a concept of civil sovereignty and nationality. These are Christian concepts lately accepted as a practical matter by Muslim and Jewish (and other) political leaders.

"Palestinian identity" as applied to Muslims and Christians inhabiting the land west of the Jordan River is a new one. But the identification of inhabitants there by religion is an old one. The British mandatory "order in council" of 1922 http://domino.un.org/UNISPAL.NSF/361eea1cc08301c485256cf600606959/c7aae196f41aa055052565f50054e656!OpenDocument provided for recognition of specific religious communities and only those communities. Israel maintains in force that order in council even today. (So, for example, Scientology or for that matter Jehovah's Witnesses, are not recognized religions.)

Under Islam, minority religions are recognized in a subordinate position, subject to discriminatory taxes and treatment. Jews and Christians had various problems under the Ottomans, but they survived as communities. With the end of the Ottoman Empire, new frictions arose. Zionism and inward migration of Jews fleeing persecution or else in fulfillment of a perceived political or religious "duty" enhanced frictions. The Holocaust increased the pressure of migration ("Exodus" being an illustration). The inward flow of European Jews who had not before lived among Arabs and Muslims was bound to create a new problem because these Jews and their descendants did not understand or accept the old order. (Sephardic Jews were expelled or fled -- and their property confiscated) all over the Arab world; these Jews also went to Israel, but had less political power and usually less wealth.)

Indeed, Europeans have an expectation of compromise; Middle Easterners -- Palestinians especially -- of uncompromised "justice".

Layered upon this are issues of "vested interests", control and title to land, access to water, cultural matters relating to capital and investment and heirship, religious extremism. And, in Israel, proporational representation as an electoral system -- something that feeds the power and influence of extremist parties.

Finally, modern communications: CNN, then Aljazeera and the Internet, brought dramatization of perceived injustice into the homes of every Arab and Muslim in the world and made the Israel-Palestine conflict a proxy for every actual and perceived injustice and slight and deprivation. Leaders of non-democratic Muslim countries have been happy to let this proxy draw attention away from local grievances.

And in the USA, Evangelicals, eagerly looking forward to the Rapture http://www.raptureready.com and the Second Coming have supported Israel even more than Jewish interests, many of which have a more nuanced attitude as liberal supporters of human and civil rights. On the other hand, the "liberal" and intellectual communities of Europe have moved from sympathy for "underdog" Palestinians to unquestioning support for the Palestinian cause and blatant anti-Semitism.

There is irony in this, because they get little credit for it (or for support of Muslims etc. in Kosovo and Bosnia). And the Palestine conflict somehow breeds terrorist movements in England and the rest of Europe.

And through it all, the Christians of the Middle East have been fleeing Palestine, Lebanon, Egypt and elsewhere for Europe, North America, Australia. Christian Arabs, unlike Muslim Arabs, integrate, assimilate, intermarry in the West. Thus the demographics of the Middle East are changing even now.

Answer 2

1) Palestine existed in the area that is now Israel for centuries.
2) In the 1920s (though they weren't the first), Zionist groups encouraged the settlement of Palestine as a Jewish homeland. This continued through World War II.
3) After the War, in 1947, the U.N. approved the partition of Palestine/Israel into 2 separate geographic states and Israel officially was founded on May 14, 1948.
4) Within days, most of the Islamic world declared war on the new state of Israel. The Arab states essentially lost this war, and Israel conquered most of the Palestinian land (with the rest being divided up between Jordan, Syria, and Egypt).
5) Thus, the Palestinians no longer had a country and felt they had a right to Israeli land.

Answer 3

At the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a dispute over land and borders.
It started in 1948 when Israel was created,by a UN resolution,in Palestine,which at that time was under a British mandate.The Arab countries around didn't accept the decision and the next day they attacked the new created state.Israel won this war.In 1967 Israel attacked Syria,Egypt and Jordan in a pre-emptive war.They occupied and annexed to Israel Gaza Strip, the Sinai Peninsula, the West Bank of the Jordan River (including East Jerusalem), and the Golan Heights.Millions of Palestinians ended up living in UN's refugees camp in Lebanon
There are 3 UN resolution that ask Israel to end the occupation on the Palestinians territories and the other territories that they occupied in 1967 ,but the Israelis refuse to do it...
Since then Palestinians are living under Israeli occupation and they are refused even the elementary rights any human should have... And there are millions of Palestinians living in UN's refugees camps...Israel refuses to let those people come back to their lands...

Answer 4

The concept of "Palestinians" is one that did not exist until about 1964, when the Arab inhabitants, of what until then was Palestine, wished to differentiate themselves from the Jews. Until then, the Jews were the Palestinians. There was the Palestinian Brigade of Jewish volunteers in the British World War II Army (at a time when the Palestinian Arabs were in Berlin hatching plans with Adolf Hitler for world conquest and how to kill all the Jews); there was the Palestinian Symphony Orchestra (all Jews, of course); there was The Palestine Post; and so much more.

The Arabs who now call themselves "Palestinians" do so in order to persuade a misinformed world that they are a distinct nationality and that "Palestine" is their ancestral homeland. But they are no distinct nationality at all. They are the same - in language, custom, and tribal and family ties - as the Arabs of Syria, Jordan, and beyond. There is no more difference between the "Palestinians" and the other Arabs of those countries than there is between, say, the citizens of Minnesota and those of Wisconsin.

What's more, many of the "Palestinians", or their immediate ancestors, came to the area attracted by the prosperity created by the Jews, in what previously had been pretty much of a wasteland.

The Israeli claim to the West Bank (as Judea and Samaria were carefully renamed by Jordan after 1948, in precisely the same way, and for the same reason, that the Romans, nearly two thousand years before, had renamed Judea as "Palestine" and Jerusalem as Aelia Capitolina) is not that of a military occupier, though it is also that. The main legal and historic claim is that based on the League of Nations Mandate, which in turn, was based on a considerable historic and moral claim recognized by the educated leaders of the then-civilized world, who actually knew something of the history of the area, and were not nearly as misinformed as so many have been by the mass media, and the laziness and prejudice of journalists today.
The notion of "occupation" of course evokes imagines of Occupied Paris, or Occupied Berlin, after the war. It implies no justification for the claims of the power with the military presence. But the claim of Israel to the lands it took in 1967 are based, for the Sinai, on the standard rules of post-war settlement, the rules which have obtained for centuries, whereby a victor in a war of defense keeps what he has won. If the Israelis chose not to, or were forced not to exercise that right, it does not mean that the right did not exist. It did, and it applies even more forcefully to Gaza and the West Bank. But the claim there is not based merely on the successful conquest of territory to which otherwise Israel had no claim. It did have a claim, a claim based clearly on the Mandate for Palestine -- and like all the other League of Nations Mandates, was formally accepted, taken over as it were, by the United Nations when it came into being. This is a matter of record. It cannot be undone.

Whatever else one wishes to say about the West Bank or Gaza, the word "occupation" is a tendentious, and cruel, misnomer. What it seeks to imply, what it seeks to implant in the minds of men, is clear: Israel has no rights here. This is nonsense. This is the very reverse of the truth. Read the Mandate, and the Preamble to the Mandate, for Palestine. Then read the records of the Mandates Commission -- and especially how they reacted when the British unilaterally announced that the terms of the mandate would not be applied to Eastern Palestine -- that is, the consolation prize given to Abdullah of the Emirate of Transjordan.

Answer 5

The fighting started back in world war 2 when the western allies had an arranged pact with Israel's people to move onto palestinian land and then create the state of Israel.Middle eastern land was settled by families thousands of years ago naming the lands of the middle east after there tribes and created names and today some of the original name of the land of the middle east are no longer spoken .

Answer 6

After WW II, when the Jews were isolated and then exterminated by the millions, there came up the question of a homeland for the Jews. They were offered many options, but the one they picked was Palestine, where they believed they had title given them by God in the Old Testament. The British who had much experience in the area, advised against this, but the world gave permission and the Jews moved in. To the Palestinians, they were illegal immigrants, and many treated the Jews as such. Two groups of very different people, with competing religious backgrounds, and both feeling claim to the same territory, was a recipe for problems that have never been adequately solved, which is how it all got started.

Answer 7

Over 2,000 years ago. Please stay tuned for more developments.

After WW2, the Allied victors proposed a state for Europe's Jewish population. There never was any Israel before WW2. The local Palestinian population were against such a creation. Its almost like a total stranger saying "hey look, these are God's chosen people, now give them your house and land for the sake of these people."

The Arabs and Izzies fought over that, and the conflict is still continuing. Six decades of fighting is just too much. Now, everything that's going on in the Middle East are all related. The Pals and Izzies recently signed a cease fire, now there is a light for peace. I don't think that cease fire would for too long.

Answer 8

The guy above me has the correct answer. In case you were curious, the reason they battle now is mostly from retribution attacks. A Palestinian guy blows up a school bus in Israel. Then Israel blows up two school busses in Palestine (oh wait I mean enemy terrorists). Then they go back and forth that way, constantly learning to hate each other more and more.

Answer 9

reposted from a prior answer by myself
the question was about the british role

Now to the question at hand. and I must confess that Britain did play a large roll in establishing the state of Israel so the statement is partly correct. The Zionist movement which began at the end of 19th century gained legitimacy and momentum with the issuance of the Balfour Declaration of 1917. The Balfour Declaration essentially gave public support of the Crown to the establishment of a Jewish homeland within Palestine. This was the first public support by a major power of the Zionist movement.. That said the the basic idea of Zionism predates British support substantially.

After WW I Britain obtained mandates to govern over much of present day Iraq, Jordan, Egypt and Palestine The British government failed to honor promises made during the war to Arab tribes to grant local control to them in return for Arab support against the Ottoman turks during WW I and maintained their control through WW II.follow WW II public support for a Zionist homeland gained great support in Europe and much of the Americas. and u had a great influx of none native Jews into Palestine. This caused much controversy a strife among the Arab states as Arab dominance of the area was diluted. The British Government facing Arab resistance and armed resistance reversed itself and began to restrict Jewish immigration. They began to intercept immigrants and place them in camps in cyprus. Now the Jewish people having felt betrayed by promises made in the Balfour Declaration took to arms also. By 1947 Britain had had enough it announced it's intention to renounce the mandate and asked the UN to devise a plan to return the area to local control.. The UN plan Divided the area into a Jewish state of Israel and gave the largely traditional Arab portions of Palestine to Jordan (west Bank) and Egypt (Gaza). Jerusalem was to be held as an international city under UN Administration. Both Jewish and Arab peoples being highly dubious of International promises because of previous treatment began to arm themselves prolifically. Upon Withdrawal of British forces in 1948 a free for all erupted to grab as much land as possible for both sides in the conflict the UN plan was never instituted. Having beaten back the Arab forces Israel declared itself an Independent state. The US was the first country to recognize the state of Israel. So there you have the origins of the conflict

Answer 10

I am FOR Israel. They are Our Front Line against the Evil of islam