The History Of Conflict Between Israel And Palestine
To understand the current issue between Israel And Palestine you need to know the chronology and content of the past. So the article is going to be of two parts. After knowing all the aspects you can make your own point of view on the issue.
Part: 1. Ancient Palestine and Creation of Israel
The story begins in 1047 BC when the whole area was called the Kingdom of Israel and was ruled by King Solomon’s capital in Jerusalem. The area was populated by Jews. King Solomon built the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, the first sacred place for Jews.
In 586 BC Babylonians invaded the kingdom and destroyed the first temple. Later came the Persians and they rebuilt it. The temple was renamed as ‘The Second Temple’.
In the chronology, Romans came into the picture and invaded the same and destroyed the temple, only one wall survived (aka western wall). Meanwhile, when all of these were going on, Jews started to migrate to Europe because they were massacred by invaders in their own country.
At the same duration, Jesus Christ was born in Jewish family. By the time he grew, he started teaching and propagating a new religion which came to be known as Christianity. The fundamentalists of the kingdom started getting offended and worried about the spread of this new religion and losing their own. So they i.e. Jews crucified Jesus Christ. Now civil war started between the Jews and the followers of Jesus Christ which led to bloodshed and exodus of Jews.
A church ( Church of the Sepulchre) was built by Roman Empire King Constantine (a Christian believer). This church was built where Jesus was crucified. It was at a distance of 2km from Temple Mount. And it became a sacred place for Christians.
With the floating time in 638 AD, the area is again invaded by Arabs and they win the war. They started settling there. Interestingly the Arabs built two holy structures Dome of the Rock and Al Aqsa Mosque near the area where there was Temple Mount existed at some point in time.
So by this time, this 37-acre area of Jerusalem became a sacred and uncompromisable place of three religions i.e. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.
Now cut-shorting the story coming to the 1900s. By this time two trends started in Europe: Anti Semitism( unfair treatment of Jews) and Pogroms ( massacre of a particular ethnicity). This again affected Jews the most and another round of exodus started in Europe.
Many of the Jews went back to Israel where now the majority were Muslims. Now the original natives of Israel were the minority in their own country. Clashes started between them.
In the meantime, World War 1 started between the Allied Powers and Central Powers.
Britain asked for war support from Jews and promised to give them their independent nation. After World War 1, with Britain’s victory, the Jewish community hoped to fulfil their fair share of promise.
Ottoman Empire was removed from Palestine and Britain took over the ruling.
Now as per its words, Britain started sending Jews to their homeland Palestine in the region where they lived.
The migration increased its pace with the rise of Hitler as the holocaust, genocide reached its peak against Jews. Hitler was Christian by religion but the reason he massacred was race and not religion. This was basically Pure Aryan vs. impure Aryan Race. So Jews were left with no option but to migrate. By the time of 1935, Jews increased from 45 thousand to 80 thousand in Palestine.
In this time World War 2 started from 1939-1944. And this time Germany lost it all.
After this war, the United Nations was formed but it was actually wrapped around the fingers of the winning countries i.e. Britain, the US, USSR. Since Jews supported Britain financially and manually they were expecting their reward in return. According to the Belford Declaration (a promise to give Jews their country), Britain was about to fulfil its promise. After the war, Britain gave the Belfourd declaration to the UN to solve it. UN appointed a committee(which consisted of people from 11 countries) to look into the matter.
The committee found that the Jewish population is 1/3rd owns only 6% land and the Arab population is 2/3rd who owns 94% land.
UN passed the judgement that two countries to be created Palestine and Israel and given to the two communities. The area of Jerusalem won’t be given to anyone and will be under the control of the UN.
The decision was made to vote, and all the Arab nations and India showed their dissent. However, the decision was passed because the rest of the countries supported it. The decision came in 1947 and with this Britain withdrew itself from Palestine. The Jews were happy with the decision of the UN but the Arabs were fuming.
By the time Britain withdrew itself from Palestine all the Arab nations ( Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Iraq) waged a war on Israel. But to everyone’s surprise, Israel defeated all the forces together and captured much more area than what it was awarded by the UN.
And that’s how Israel established itself on the world map. In 1950 Israel passed the Law of Return which meant any Jews from any corner of the world could come back and get citizenship in the country.
From this time the clashes started between Arabs and Jews which will be part 2 of the Article.
Concluding this on the cruel and crucially disturbing fact that Jews were the most massacred community of all time at all places in history. Their fight started for survival and is still going on when the world is looking for its upgradation, they are still on Darwin’s theory.
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