The Israel and Palestine war

Many events before and after the World War has been dictated by the Israeli and the Palestinian crisis. The crisis mainly started when the Zionist Jews expressed their desire for a separate state and it took shape in the year 1917, when the British had occupied Palestine and passed the Balfour Declaration. This declaration stated that a separate state would be carved out of Palestine and made in to Israel. In the year 1947, Israel was created out of Palestine with the help of the British government. However, Neither, Palestine nor the Arab states recognized Israel as a separate country.

In the bid to de-recognize Israel, Egypt backed by Syria and Jordan launched a war against Israel. This war was called the “Six-Day war”. But, in this war Israel emerged victorious and occupied the territories Sinai Peninsula of Egypt, Golan Heights of Syria and certain parts of Jordan. Israel also occupied the half the city of Jerusalem during this war. Unable to bear the defeat, Egypt again launched another war against Israel in the year 1973. This was called the “Yom-Kitpur” or the “Ramadan War”. Egypt was able to win back her territories but lost them again to Israel within ten days of the war.

After the war, Egypt then entered into an agreement with Israel where they decided to resolve the matter peacefully. In this agreement Egypt wanted Israel to retract from the occupied areas and to take back the Palestinian refugees.

The Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), which was formed before Israel had occupied any lands in the “Six-Day War”, was formed with main tenet to complete the non-reorganization of Israel. In the year 1988, Yasser Arafat (who was the leader of PLO) recognized Israel’s right for existence and hence, helped to enable negotiations between Israel and PLO. This step led to the formation of the “Oslo Accord” in 1993, for which Yasser Arafat had received the Nobel Peace Award. This accord was carried forward in Camp David where Israel to return some parts of the Sinai Peninsula and Golan Heights.

However, the Oslo accord faced a lot of opposition in Palestine and could not take off as it mainly remained in the form of paper work. The United Nations got together with Russia, U.K and the U.S.A and took the initiative to bring peace between these two countries. This step was called the “Roadmap to Peace”. But even this initiative failed. Israel decided to move out of the Gaza strip in the year 2004, however, there was no substantial gain as geographically Gaza strip remained within Israel. In the year 2004, Yasser Arafat passed away leading to an irreparable split within the PLO (Fatah). This split led to the emergence of the non-secular group called the Hamas. Both, these groups had complete different viewpoints. The Palestinian political front further weakened when Mohammed Abbas became the president of Palestine (he was the leader of Fatah). Thus, Palestine was in a strange condition where her Government was Hamas and her President was Fatah. A strife is still continues within these two countries and both the countries still do not show any movement towards a peaceful relation.