Arab–Israeli conflict
Taking the side of the Palestinians, especially following the Israeli Declaration of Independence, the neighbouring Arab countries invaded the by-then former Mandate territory in May 1948, commencing the First Arab–Israeli War.Among Arab belligerents in the conflict, Iraq and Syria are the only states who have reached no formal peace accord or treaty with Israel, with both supporting Iran.In the late 19th century European and Middle Eastern Jewish communities began to increasingly immigrate to Palestine and purchase land from the local Ottoman landlords.The population of the late 19th century in Palestine reached 600,000 – mostly Muslim Arabs, but also significant minorities of Jews, Christians, Druze and some Samaritans and Baháʼís.During 1915–16, as World War I was underway, the British High Commissioner in Egypt, Sir Henry McMahon, secretly corresponded with Husayn ibn 'Ali, the patriarch of the Hashemite family and Ottoman governor of Mecca and Medina.[23][verification needed] Demonstrations were held as early as 1920, protesting what the Arabs felt were unfair preferences for the Jewish immigrants set forth by the British mandate that governed Palestine at the time.[29] In response to Arab pressure,[30] the British Mandate authorities greatly reduced the number of Jewish immigrants to Palestine (see White Paper of 1939 and the SS Exodus).Further in Clause 10(e): The Governments of the Arab States hereby confirm at this stage the view that had been repeatedly declared by them on previous occasions, such as the London Conference and before the United Nations mainly, the only fair and just solution to the problem of Palestine is the creation of United State of Palestine based upon the democratic principles ...That day, the armies of Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Iraq invaded what had just ceased to be the British Mandate, marking the beginning of the 1948 Arab–Israeli War.The nascent Israeli Defense Force repulsed the Arab nations from part of the occupied territories, thus extending its borders beyond the original UNSCOP partition.[41] During the war, official Israeli documents subsequently uncovered by Benny Morris and Benjamin Kedar have revealed that Israel conducted a biological warfare campaign codenamed "Cast Thy Bread" to covertly poison Palestinian wells to prevent villagers from returning.Anti-Jewish riots erupted throughout the Arab World in December 1947, and Jewish communities were hit particularly hard in Aleppo and British-controlled Aden, with hundreds of dead and injured.[60][59] At the war's end, Israel had gained control of the Sinai Peninsula, the Gaza Strip, the West Bank (including East Jerusalem), Shebaa farms, and the Golan Heights.Once Sadat took over, he tried to forge positive relations with the US, hoping that they would put pressure on Israel to return the land, by expelling 15,000 Russian advisors from Egypt.Under its terms, the Sinai Peninsula returned to Egyptian hands, and the Gaza Strip remained under Israeli control, to be included in a future Palestinian state.The agreement also provided for the free passage of Israeli ships through the Suez Canal and recognition of the Straits of Tiran and the Gulf of Aqaba as international waterways.In October 1994, Israel and Jordan signed a peace agreement, which stipulated mutual cooperation, an end of hostilities, the fixing of the Israel-Jordan border, and a resolution of other issues.Its signing is also closely linked with the efforts to create peace between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) representing the Palestinian National Authority (PNA).During the Gulf War in 1991, Iraq fired 39 Scud missiles into Israel, in the hopes of uniting the Arab world against the coalition which sought to liberate Kuwait.It was a month when Hashemite King Hussein of Jordan moved to quash the autonomy of Palestinian organisations and restore his monarchy's rule over the country.By 1985, Israeli forces withdrew to a 15 km wide southern strip of Lebanon, following which the conflict continued on a lower scale, with relatively low casualties on both sides.In addition to general strikes, boycotts on Israeli products, graffiti and barricades, Palestinian demonstrations that included stone-throwing by youths against the Israel Defense Forces brought the Intifada international attention.The Israeli army's heavy handed response to the demonstrations, with live ammunition, beatings and mass arrests, brought international condemnation.A year previously, he had commented that the fate of the most far-flung settlements in Gaza, Netzararem and Kfar Darom, was regarded in the same light as that of Tel Aviv.[83] The formal announcements to evacuate seventeen Gaza settlements and another four in the West Bank in February 2004 represented the first reversal for the settler movement since 1968, dividing Sharon's party.[101] On 6 September 2007, in Operation Orchard, Israel bombed an eastern Syrian complex which was allegedly a nuclear reactor being built with assistance from North Korea.In April 2008, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad told a Qatari newspaper that Syria and Israel had been discussing a peace treaty for a year, with Turkey as a go-between.Israel has provided humanitarian aid to Syrian war victims, an effort that was drastically geared up since June 2016 when the Operation Good Neighbour was launched by the Israeli military.On 9 December 2017, US president Donald Trump announced the United States recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, prompting condemnation by other world leaders as well as the 2018 Gaza border protests.The Arab–Israeli alliance emerged by November 2017,[145] upon warming ties between Israel and the Gulf States and received broad media attention in light of the February 2019 Warsaw Conference.[148] In February 2020, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Chairman of the Sovereignty Council of Sudan, Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, met in Uganda, where they both agreed to normalize the ties between the two countries.
Boundaries defined in the 1947 UN Partition Plan for Palestine :
Area assigned for a Jewish state
Area assigned for an Arab state
Armistice Demarcation Lines of 1949 ( Green Line ):
Israeli controlled territory from 1949
Israel and Palestine
Recognition of only Israel
Recognition of Israel, with some relations to Palestine
Recognition of both Israel and Palestine
Recognition of Palestine, with some relations to Israel
Recognition of only Palestine
No data
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