Arab-Israeli conflict

The Arab-Israeli Conflict (Arabic: الصراع العربي الإسرائيلي Al-Sira'a Al'Arabi A'Israili; Hebrew: הסכסוך הישראלי-ערבי Ha'Sikhsukh Ha'Yisraeli-Aravi) refers to the political tension and armed conflicts between the State of Israel and its Arab neighbors, particularly the Palestinians.

Its definition, history and possible solutions are the subject of permanent debate and the problems it includes vary over time. As of today, the main issues are sovereignty over the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, the status of eastern Jerusalem, the Golan Heights and the Shebaa Farms, the fate of Israeli settlements and refugees Palestinians, the recognition of Israel and Palestine as independent States, the right of both to exist and live in peace free from threats and acts of force, as well as Israel's relationship with Syria and Lebanon.

Israel currently has peace treaties in force with Egypt and Jordan that guarantee their coexistence. Likewise, it has ceasefire treaties signed with Lebanon, Syria and Saudi Arabia which, although they do not recognize the existence of Israel, have in practice been an effective mechanism for the cessation of hostilities. There is also a complex provisional agreement with Palestine, which involves the establishment of a kind of Israeli protectorate over the Palestinian area and a partial ceasefire.

History

For more than fifteen centuries, the Jewish people lived divided in various countries of the world, especially in Europe, in what is known as the Jewish diaspora. Their coexistence with the rest of the Europeans was not always easy, and the persecutions and pogroms, especially in Eastern Europe at the end of the century XIX, were decisive for the appearance and rise of political Zionism, which demanded its own State for all the Jewish communities scattered throughout the world. Cultural Zionists stressed the importance of making Palestine a center for the spiritual and cultural growth of the Jewish people. At the time Zionism was founded, Palestine was part of the Ottoman Empire and was inhabited by the vast majority of Christian Arabs and Muslims, as well as by a small community of religious Jews who, although a minority, had a significant presence in the region. city of Jerusalem and its environs.

World War I

Map of the territory under the British Mandate of Palestine before the creation of the kingdom of Transjordania.

In 1914, the Ottoman Empire decided to enter World War I on the side of the Central Powers and the British government began to see the Zionist movement as a possible ally in a war that seemed to be going poorly for the allies. In parallel, British agents such as T. E. Lawrence encouraged Arab rebellions against Ottoman rule in the Middle East under the promise of future independent Arab states. Around 1917, David Lloyd George and Arthur Balfour, Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary respectively, were looking for alliances that could improve the course of the war. It was then considered that the Jews could be doubly useful, helping to hold up the Eastern Front and stimulating the American war effort. This is how the Balfour Declaration was produced on November 2, 1917, by which the United Kingdom declared itself favorable to the Zionist plans for the creation of a Jewish national home in Palestine. Allied victory and the collapse of the Ottoman Empire would leave the British government in control of Palestine for the next thirty years, taking the official form of the Mandate of the newly created League of Nations.

During the 1920s the number of Jews in Palestine increased remarkably: in 1922 their number was 83,790 out of a total population of 752,048; in 1929 there were 156,481 out of a total population of 992,559, doubling its population in seven years. Jewish immigration was channeled through the World Zionist Organization, whose main figure was Chaim Weizmann, and linked to the Jewish Agency for Palestine, which acted as a government for the Jews of Palestine, buying land and building schools, hospitals and settlements. The main figure of the organization in the mid-1930s was David Ben Gurion. The philosophy of Ben Gurion and his colleagues was to build Zion by forging a Jewish nation, that is, laying the foundations for the future creation of a Jewish State in Palestine. The Arabs did not have institutions similar to those that the Jews were developing, due to the feudalism that still existed and that allowed the most powerful clans to dominate the majority of the population, highlighting the continuous clashes between the Husseinis and Nashashibis.

Palestine was relatively quiet between 1922 and 1928, when violence broke out in the form of clashes between Arabs and Jews and between Arabs themselves at Jerusalem's West Barrier. In August 1929 these clashes resulted in the massacre of Hebron, Safed and other Palestinian Jewish communities in 1929. The result of these incidents was the death of 133 Jews and 116 Arabs, and a downward reinterpretation of the Balfour Declaration and Zionist aspirations: two British commissions, under the command of Walter Shaw and John Hope-Simpson, attempted to redefine British policy in Palestine, identifying Arab fear of immigration and Jewish land purchase as the main cause of the difficulties between both communities. Hope-Simpson's recommendation that the territory's features would only admit 20,000 more Jewish immigrants drew rejection from the Zionists. However, in February 1931, British Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald wrote to Weizmann stating that his government had no intention of banning Jewish immigration, mainly because the situation in Palestine seemed to have calmed down again. However, this relative calm would not last long: European political developments would completely change the Arab-Israeli conflict. On January 30, 1933, Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany and by March had already secured his dictatorship.

World War II

Buchenwald concentration camp.

Increasing anti-Semitism in Germany and Romania caused large numbers of Jews to flee Europe, leaving Palestine as their only option due to US immigration restrictions. By 1936, the Jewish population had increased to 370,483 out of a total population of 1,336,518. The Arab reaction against what they considered an ugly transformation of the country was the Arab Revolt, which began on April 15, 1936 with the murder of a Jew near Nablus. The scale of the revolt led to a significant deployment of British forces, as well as official sympathy for the Haganah, the defensive force of the Jewish Agency. The Palestinian Royal Commission, under Lord Peel, was tasked with the task of investigating the underlying causes of the unrest and recommending a solution to deal with the legitimate grievances of Arabs and Jews. Its greatest exponent, Professor Reginald Coupland of the University of Oxford, came to the conclusion that there were two clearly differentiated cultures in Palestine: an Arab of Asian origin and a Jewish one of European origin. Considering that two contrasting cultures would not manage to coexist in a single State, Coupland proposed partitioning into two different States as the only solution. Coupland managed to convince his colleagues on the Commission and even Weizmann, who became a supporter of partition. Even so, not all Zionists were in favor of partition and the Arabs were strongly opposed to it.

Towards the end of 1937 the British began to abandon their support for the idea of the Jewish home and the partition of the Mandate, since they sought to secure Arab sympathy in the pre-war situation leading up to World War II. A new declaration, known as the White Paper, was sponsored by Malcolm MacDonald, British Colonial Secretary, marking a complete reversal of British policy in Palestine and an end to the commitment to the Jews begun two decades earlier through the Balfour Declaration. The White Paper was published weeks before the start of World War II and stated that within ten years Palestine would become a single independent state ruled jointly by Arabs and Jews. Under the new plan, Jewish immigration would be limited to 75,000 people over the next five years and with prior Arab consent (which effectively meant a closure to legal immigration on the eve of the start of the war), so that Jews would always maintain a minority status due to their lower demographic weight.

Despite many Arabs realizing that the new declaration largely served their aspirations, the Egyptian government and some top Palestinian leaders such as exiled cleric Amin al-Husayni rejected it as insufficient. The Palestinian leader's alliance with the Third Reich, which included the recruitment of a division of Bosnian Muslims into the SS, would significantly damage the Palestinian cause by being associated with the Nazi regime.

The Holocaust

Jewish children rescued from the German concentration camps in 1945 being taken to the State for the Jews in the British Mandate of Palestine (now known as the State of Israel).

In the case of the Jews, the new policy of the British government embodied in the White Paper, which remained in force during the war, was seen as an act of denunciation, despite which they maintained their support for Great Britain in the imminent war conflict. In November 1938, the Reichskristallnacht, in which the Nazis unleashed state terror against the Jews, revealed the true intentions of the Third Reich and caused an increase in Jewish emigration.

The British authorities' impediment to Jewish immigration to Palestine (as highlighted by the case of the SS Struma) confirmed the Jewish belief that protection could only be achieved through the construction of a State where the Jews could control their own destiny, which is why the Haganah began to buy and manufacture weapons. More problematic for the British were the activities of two other underground Jewish groups: the Irgun Zvai Leumi (National Military Organization) and the Leh'i (Israeli Freedom Fighters), who represented the far-right tradition of Zionism, in conflict with the Jewish Agency and the official movement.

In February 1944, the Irgun, led by a young Polish Jew, Menahem Begin, proclaimed that the British had betrayed the Jewish people and declared war on the Mandate. The Lehi had been created by another Polish Jew, Abraham Stern, whose grudge against the British made him sympathize with the Germans themselves. On November 6, 1944, its members assassinated Lord Moyne, the British Minister for the Middle East. This event provoked the antipathy of Winston Churchill, a close friend of Moyne's, who had planned to develop the Jewish state just after the war.

The partition of Palestine and the creation of Israel

At the time, much of the Middle East was controlled by the UK, which had interests in the Persian Gulf and airbases in Iraq. Of the states bordering Palestine, Lebanon and Syria had been liberated from the French Mandate in 1943 and 1946 respectively. Egypt had important relations with the British due to the 1936 treaty, the most important element of which was the Suez Canal zone. Transjordan would become independent in 1946, but remained closely linked to Britain. At a time that was to prove historic for the Palestinian Arabs, they lacked the necessary political and leadership structures, unable to copy the well-organized political structure of the Jews with the Jewish Agency. The British suppression of the 1936-1939 revolt had resulted in the death, imprisonment or exile of most of the Palestinian Arab leaders, the seizure of significant quantities of weapons and a general sense of war weariness among the civilian population. In the opinion of some authors, the Arab world in general, and the Palestinian Arab in particular, were in a disadvantaged condition to resist the Zionist challenge that was coming. In the opinion of other historians, such as Joan B. Culla, The maximalism of the Arab position prevented them from taking advantage of the opportunities available to them in the different negotiating processes, prioritizing the expulsion of the Jews and the interests of the new neighboring Arab states in the area (including the possibility of annexing the Arab part of Palestine), above the interests of the Palestinian Arab population and their recognized right to dispose of their own State.

The international scene

The American President (1945-1953) Harry S. Truman.

U.S. President Harry S. Truman had some sympathy for the Jewish cause, but in practice Truman only turned his attention to Palestine after a failed attempt to persuade Congress to allow large numbers of Jews settle in the United States. On August 31, 1946, he formally asked the British government to issue 100,000 immigration certificates, noting that "no other problem is so important to those who have known the horrors of concentration camps". The British response was negative, pointing out that there were many victims of Hitler in the European camps and that Jews should not be placed at the top of the list. The tone of the British response showed to what extent the British attitude had moved away from the pro-Zionist sympathy of 1944, and thus opened the way for the struggle of the Jews against the British in the Palestine Mandate, whose most famous attack was against the British headquarters, housed in the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, which caused 91 deaths and ultimately led the British out of Palestine and paved the way for the creation of the Jewish state.

On November 29, 1947, after multiple diplomatic disputes, the General Assembly of the United Nations approved the Plan for the Partition of Palestine into two States, one Arab and the other Jewish, neither compact nor homogeneous, divided into three respective portions barely linked together. The Jewish state would comprise 55% of the Mandatory territory (14,100 km²), including the Negev desert, and its population would be made up of 500,000 Jews and 400 000 Palestinian Arabs. At that time, the Jews only owned 7% of the land in Palestine. The Palestinian Arab state would have 44% of the Mandatory territory (11,500 km²) and a minority of about 10,000 Jews. Jerusalem and its surrounding area, including Bethlehem, would form a corpus separatum of 700 km² under the administration of the United Nations Trusteeship Council. In addition, this plan provided for the withdrawal of the British army from the Mandate before August 1948 and the fixation of the borders between the two States and in Jerusalem itself.

The Jews accepted the proposed Plan, despite disagreeing with the terms of a division that made the assigned territory indefensible and impractical, but the Arabs rejected it outright. The Arab Higher Committee (the body of the Arab-Palestinian leadership) described as "absurd, impractical and unfair" both the distribution and the federal proposal and, seeing diplomatic ground lost, threatened war to defend Arab Palestine. In any case, by then a civil war was already going on in Palestine that consisted mainly of terrorist attacks first and military movements later. The various terrorist attacks by Jewish groups such as Lehi, the Irgun or the Haganah itself led to an exodus of the Arab population from Palestine to areas they considered safer. By mid-January 1948, attacks by various Jewish groups had forced one fifth of the Jaffa population (about 15,000 people) to flee elsewhere. By the end of January, an estimated 20,000 Arabs Palestinians had left their homes in Haifa.

A series of bloody attacks took place, including the bomb planted by the Haganah in the Hotel Semiramis in Jerusalem, killing 26 civilians, among whom was the Spanish consul general in the city, or the attack against the Jewish daily Palestine Post, which left twenty civilian victims soon after. In the midst of the civil war, two events ended up collapsing the morale of the Palestinian civilian population and increasing their flight even more. On April 8, Abdelkader al-Husayni, commander of the Holy Jihad Army and main Palestinian military leader, was accidentally killed. The next day, April 9, some 120 Irgun and Lehi men carried out the Deir Yassin massacre. The casualty count was set at 107 villagers killed, including a multitude of women, old men and children. News of the massacre further panicked the Palestinian Arab civilian population, causing them to flee en masse. April 1948, the day before a group of Palestinian Arab guerrillas ambushed a convoy of trucks, ambulances, buses, and armored vehicles headed for the Jewish enclave of Mount Scopus. 78 teachers, students, nurses, doctors and Haganah soldiers who were escorting them died.

David Ben-Gurión (the prime minister of Israel) reads the Declaration of Independence of Israel, on May 14, 1948, in Tel Aviv, Israel, under a great portrait of Theodor Herzl, founder of modern Zionism.

The cities of Tiberias, Haifa and Jaffa fell into Jewish hands over the next few weeks, with heavy shelling on Arab residential areas causing the Palestinian Arab civilian population to flee en masse. On May 10, the Jewish troops took Safad and expelled its thousands of Palestinian Arab inhabitants. In Beisan, all the Arabs were expelled from their homes and sent to Nazareth or beyond the Jordan River. When Jewish troops entered Acre, only about 3,000 of them its 13,400 inhabitants had remained in the city.

In this context, on May 15, 1948, the British Mandate for Palestine expired. A day earlier, the Jews proclaimed the independence of the State of Israel in their part of the territory granted by the UN Partition Plan, due to the holiday of the Sabbath. This declaration provoked as an immediate reaction the invasion of the armies of the Arab alliance, thus beginning the Arab-Israeli war of 1948.

Ben Gurion, who inaugurated the position of prime minister of the State of Israel, accepted the partition of Palestine into Israeli territories and Palestinian territories that the UN established in 1947. But he had an old underlying thought: in a letter to his wife he confided that

a "partial" Jewish state – a 1937 project of the British occupant that was never carried out – was just a start and that planned to organize a first-class army and use coercion or force to absorb the entire expanse of the country.

The 1948 War

Attacks 15 May-10 June 1948.

The day after the Declaration of independence of the State of Israel in the territory assigned by the UN Plan for the partition of Palestine in 1947, five neighboring Arab States (Lebanon, Syria, Transjordan, Iraq and Egypt), dissatisfied With said Plan and with the expulsion or flight of the Palestinian civilian population that was being carried out by the Israeli troops, they declared war on the nascent State of Israel and tried to invade it under the command of the Arab general Salim Abdala Kais.

In the intermittent warfare that took place over the next 15 months (interrupted occasionally by various UN-brokered truces), Israel conquered and annexed an additional 26% of the former British Mandate, while Transjordan and Egypt occupied the remainder assigned by the UN to the Arab-Palestinian state: Egypt occupied the Gaza Strip and Transjordan annexed the West Bank and East Jerusalem, refounding the country under the name of Jordan.

The war caused hundreds of thousands of displaced people in both directions: more than two-thirds of the Palestinian Arab civilian population (around 750,000 people) were forced to move to the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, as well as other neighboring Arab countries, such as Lebanon, Syria or Jordan, giving rise to the problem of Palestinian refugees that still persists today. In the Israeli zone, 156,000 Palestinian Arabs remained, who acquired Israeli nationality and who, in general, theoretically, enjoyed full citizenship rights from 1950, including their incorporation into the army in the case of the Druze.. However, Israel's Palestinian Arabs lived under martial law until 1966, and around half of them - legally known as absentee presenters - suffered the expropriation of their land and property by the State of Israel, which it destined the new Jewish immigrants. According to traditional Israeli historiography, the departure of the Arabs from their land was due to the fact that the Arab leadership instigated the Arab population in Palestine to leave their homes in order to guarantee the Arab troops greater freedom of movement. However, Arab sources and new Israeli historians, as well as numerous international historians, claim that there is no proof of this and point to attacks by the army and Jewish paramilitary groups as the source of the Palestinian mass exodus.

In parallel, the Jewish communities that lived in Arab countries (many of them from before the Arab and Muslim expansion), were forced to emigrate in the following years. During the 1950s alone, 608,200 Oriental Jews, a slightly smaller number than Palestinian refugees, fled or were expelled from Arab territories and took refuge in Israel, where they obtained Israeli citizenship thanks to the so-called Law of Return; another 290,800 Jewish refugees settled in France or the United States (see Jewish Exodus from Arab Countries). It was a phenomenon of variable intensity depending on the countries in which it occurred, ranging from the confiscation of property and land in some countries to the direct persecution of Jews in others. In any case, the result in practice was the near liquidation of Jewish communities in Arab countries.

On December 11, 1948, in its Resolution 194, the United Nations General Assembly ruled "that refugees who wish to return to their homes and live in peace with their neighbours, that they do so as soon as possible, and that compensation should be paid for the assets of those who decide not to return to their homes and for any property lost or damaged when, under the principles of international law or for reasons of equity, this loss or damage must be repaired by the Governments or responsible authorities". In this way, it recognized the right of return of the Palestinian refugees and created the Agency for the United Nations for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA in its English acronym) in the hope of an immediate return, something that, however, did not happen. In fact, already during the 1948 war itself, at the very moment when the Palestinian population was fleeing or being expelled by the Israeli army, Israel made public its official position rejecting the return of the refugees. By indefinitely prolonging its condition of "refugees", and their fate in the hands of the UN, they never obtained the nationality of the Arab countries that welcomed them (except in the case of Jordan, which recognized the Palestinians from the West Bank and Jerusalem as nationals) and remained in uprooted and precarious conditions. For their part, the Jewish refugees, who did not receive any recognition or help from the UN, were quickly integrated into Israel and housed in the houses that had been left empty after the exodus of the Palestinian population.

The Suez War (1956)

Israel's advances in Sinai.

Although the 1949 armistices marked Israel's independence, they did not mean the end of hostilities between Israel and its Arab neighbors. Throughout the 1950s there were both attacks by Palestinian fedayeen supported mainly by Egypt and Israeli attacks on Jordanian, Syrian and Egyptian border positions. In October 1953, an Israeli unit commanded by Ariel Sharon carried out the Qibya massacre in Jordanian-controlled Palestinian territory, killing 69 civilians, two-thirds of them women and children. In December 1955, during Operation Kinneret, an Israeli attack on Syrian positions on the Sea of Galilee coast, killed 54 Syrian soldiers. In February 1955, without prior provocation, Israeli commandos killed 38 Egyptian soldiers in a cross-border attack on the Gaza Strip, then under Egyptian control. This led Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser to decree the closure of the Strait of Tiran to ships and planes coming from or going to Israel. For its part, Israel signed an alliance with the UK and France for a joint attack on Egypt, as both nations were at odds with Gamal Abdel Nasser over the nationalization of the Suez Canal.

On October 29, 1956, the joint invasion of Egypt was triggered by Israel, which occupied the Sinai Peninsula, and France and the United Kingdom, which sent paratroopers to Port Said and the Suez Canal. Although the Allies achieved all their objectives militarily, joint diplomatic pressure from the Soviet Union and the US forced them to withdraw, in what the Arab countries considered a political victory. As a consequence of this war, the UN decided to deploy a blue helmet force between Egypt and Israel; however, Israel refused to allow access to the UN interposition forces, known as UNEF, so it could only be deployed on the Egyptian side of the border. The Franco-Israeli rapprochement also brought with it the development of Israeli nuclear energy, which materialized in 1958 in the creation of the Dimona nuclear power plant.

In this context, the Arabs began to organize themselves into different associations to resist. The most important was the PLO (Palestinian Liberation Organization), founded in May 1964 in Jerusalem with the support of the Arab League and at the behest of Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser, as a unified Palestinian organization.

The Six Day War (1967)

Israeli soldiers in the six-day war.

Israel and the territories occupied after the six-day war in 1967.

In 1967 the Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser asked the United Nations to withdraw the Blue Helmets from Gaza, Sinai, and the islands of Tiran and Sanafir (at the entrance to the Gulf of Aqaba), a request that the UN, then chaired by U Thant, accepted despite the fact that this meant renouncing its role as intermediary. Egypt mobilized 80,000 troops in the Sinai and sent troops to its islands in the Gulf of Aqaba on May 22. This again endangered the departure of Israeli ships to the Red Sea, and was considered a casus belli by the Israeli government. Egypt proposed taking the closure of the Straits of Tiran to an international court of arbitration. That same month, Egypt, Syria and Iraq signed a mutual defense pact. On June 5, 1967, faced with the Egyptian refusal to unblock the Gulf of Aqaba, Israel bombarded the Egyptian aviation located in the Sinai peninsula, thus beginning the Six Day War.

In the 6 days that the war lasted, Israel conquered the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, East Jerusalem, the Sinai Peninsula and the Golan Heights (Syria). Except for the case of the Sinai peninsula, which was returned to Egypt in 1979 as a result of the Camp David peace accords, the rest of the territories are still militarily occupied by Israel to this day.

The war led to a second wave of between 300,000 and 400,000 Palestinian refugees, of whom nearly a third became refugees a second time. Most went into exile in Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, and the Persian Gulf states.

Resolution 242

In November 1967, the United Nations adopted Resolution 242, which "affirms that compliance with the principles of the Charter requires the establishment of a just and lasting peace in the Middle East, which includes the application of the following two principles: "withdrawal of the Israeli armed forces from the territories they occupied during the recent conflict" and "termination of all situations of belligerence or allegations of its existence, and respect and recognition of the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of all the States in the area and of their right to live in peace within secure and recognized borders and free from threat or acts of force". In addition, it called for "guaranteeing freedom of navigation through international shipping lanes in the area" and "achieve a fair solution to the refugee problem", as well as establishing demilitarized zones between the States of the area.

The text of Resolution 242 is ambiguous as to whether it requires Israel to withdraw from all territories occupied in the war (according to the text of the French version "Retrait des forces armées israéliennes des territoires occupés lors du récent conflit" and Spanish: "withdrawal of the Israeli armed forces from the territories they occupied during the recent conflict") or from only one part of the territories (according to the English version: Withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict). The absence of the article "the" ("the") in the English version of the text has led Israel to argue that the resolution only requires it to "withdraw from territories occupied in the recent conflict," and not "the withdrawal from the territories occupied in the recent conflict", as required by the Spanish and French versions of the same document.

The PLO categorically rejected the resolution as "trampling on the rights of two million Palestinians," and demanded that Israel fulfill its part and withdraw from the conquered territories, which it failed to do and would mark the conflict to date.

War of Attrition (1967-1970)

An Egyptian bomber Ilyushin Il-28 attacks the Israeli army in Sinai during the Desert War.

Painting that represents one of the most famous images of the kidnapping and murder of 11 Israeli athletes in the 1972 Munich Olympics.

In the years following the 1967 war, there was a subterranean war known as the War of Attrition. Israel maintained the military occupation of all the territories conquered in the 1967 war, subjecting the native population to martial law and encouraging the settlement of Jews in the occupied territories, in clear violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which in its Article 49 prohibits the transfer of the civilian population of the occupying power to the occupied territory.

As for East Jerusalem, Israel annexed this part of the city at the conclusion of the war and began the demolition of Palestinian neighborhoods and the construction of Jewish neighborhoods in the area. For its part, Egypt multiplied its military harassment against Israel, which would culminate in the Yom Kippur war in 1973, and intensified its support for the Palestinian armed groups that, starting in 1968 (and with Syrian support for the Popular Front for Liberation of Palestine), they began an international terrorist escalation that included hijackings of commercial airplanes and destruction of empty planes, attacks against Israeli embassies and diplomats, attacks on interests of the Jewish community around the world or attacks on gas and oil installations. This escalation would ultimately culminate in the Munich massacre, perpetrated against Israeli athletes competing in the 1972 Olympic Games. Israel retaliated against the perpetrators through Operation Wrath of God in subsequent years.

The War of Attrition was a limited war between Egypt and Israel that took place during the years 1968 to 1970. It was launched by Egypt in an attempt to recapture the Sinai after Israel's refusal to abandon the territories occupied in the War of the Six Days, in accordance with what is required in resolution 242. The War of Attrition involved a significant number of casualties in the Israeli army (more than double the deaths of the Six Day War) and in the Egyptian. The war also involved direct intervention by the Soviet Union in the Arab-Israeli conflict and ended with a ceasefire signed between the countries in 1970 that left the armistice lines in the same place they were when the war began.

Yom Kippur War (1973) and peace with Egypt (1979)

Egyptian forces crossing the Suez Canal on October 7, 1973.

Israeli commands after having rescued more than 100 hostages in Uganda (Operation Entebbe).

Camp David peace agreements of 1979. From left to right, Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, U.S. President Jimmy Carter and Egyptian leader Anwar el-Sadat, who would be killed in 1981. Egypt was the first Arab country to recognize the State of Israel and in return received the Sinai Peninsula, which had been occupied by Israel since 1967.

The Yom Kippur War, Ramadan War or October War was an armed conflict between Israel and the Arab countries of Egypt and Syria that took place during October 1973. Egypt and Syria began the conflict to recover the territories that Israel had occupied since the 1967 Six-Day War. Both parties suffered heavy losses, although Israel kept the conquered territories.

On October 6, 1973, the Jewish holiday Yom Kippur, Egypt and Syria launched their attack on Israel. The date had been chosen carefully as most of the Israeli population was at home fasting, making their defensive position more vulnerable. The Egyptian army quickly crossed the Suez Canal quickly overcoming the Israeli defenses. At the same time, Syrian forces advanced on the Golan Heights. Once the Sinai peninsula had been recovered, Anwar el Sadat, president of Egypt, decided to stop the Egyptian front, accepting the recovery of his former territory. This allowed Israel to concentrate all its forces on the northern front and regain the initiative in a war in which it saw for the first time how it was outmatched by its Arab enemies. This decision taken by the Egyptian president, together with the subsequent signing of a peace treaty with Israel, was considered a betrayal in the Arab world and would lead, years later, to his assassination in a military parade.

Overcoming the shock of the military coup and the high number of casualties, by mid-October Israel had mobilized its troops and had launched a series of counterattacks on both fronts. He displaced the Syrians from the Golan Heights, invaded the country itself and threatened the capital, Damascus, with artillery, placing a bulk of troops 100 km away; at the same time, he was advancing the Sinai counter-offensive, driving the Egyptians back beyond their borders and across the Suez Canal, positioning armored units 40 km from Cairo.

The Arab countries, faced with this reality, decided to start an economic war and embargoed the oil from the countries that helped Israel, at the same time that they reduced sales with the purpose of achieving an increase in prices. Its effect, which went down in history as the 1973 oil crisis, was a destabilization of the international economy, which put pressure on the US and the USSR to reach an agreement through the UN. After the UN resolution of October 22, a ceasefire was reached on the 25th. Egypt began to move away from the Soviet theses and get closer to the United States, while Syria maintained its positions linked to the USSR. Both sides considered themselves victors. From now on, Israel will no longer rely on static security, but Egypt's rapprochement with the Western world will favor the Camp David accords later.

Camp David Accords (1978)

The great feeling of vulnerability caused by the Egyptian-Syrian offensive in the Yom Kippur War pushed Israel to begin unilaterally negotiating a separate peace with Egypt that would imply the return of the occupied territories (the Sinai Peninsula) in exchange of a permanent peace agreement and the establishment of collateral relations. On September 17, 1978, Egyptian President Anwar el-Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin signed the Camp David Peace Accords in the presence of United States President Jimmy Carter. This agreement marked Israel's first peace treaty with an Arab country and the application for the first time in Israel's history of the doctrine of peace by territories, established in UN resolution 242 in 1967.

The peace agreement brought important advantages to both countries, which had to make important resignations to carry it out. Israel secured a final peace treaty with the largest Arab power in the region which, once off the board, greatly reduced the vital risk to the State of Israel. Instead, it had to return territory conquered in 1967, including several settlements established north of the Sinai Peninsula, creating a major political fracture within the country. On the Egyptian side, the peace treaty meant the recovery of all the national territory lost in the Six-Day War (the Gaza Strip, which had also been occupied by Israel in that conflict, was not legally part of Egypt). However, Egypt abruptly moved away from the "doctrine of the three nos," established by the Arab League at the Khartoum Conference in 1967, which declared "no to peace with Israel, no to the recognition of Israel and not negotiations with Israel". This led to numerous accusations of treason and significant isolation in the Arab community for years. Anwar el-Sadat was singled out as a traitor and was assassinated by one of his bodyguards in Cairo on October 6, 1981.

The Lebanon War (1982)

After the Black September of 1970, thousands of Palestinian guerrillas are expelled from Jordan, and the PLO decides to establish its bases in Lebanon, from where they began to carry out incursions into Israeli territory to provoke attacks, maintaining direct confrontations with the Israeli forces along the southern border of Lebanon. In March 1978, after a Palestinian commando killed 35 Israeli civilians on a bus, the government of Menahem Begin ordered three Tsahal brigades to invade some 1,000 km² of southern Lebanon, up to the Litani River, with the aim of objective of ending the bases of the fedayeen. Before withdrawing three months later, Israel establishes a "security zone" 10 kilometers wide 'over territory with a majority Christian-Maronite population, and leaves it in the hands of an allied militia called the Free Lebanon Army (later the South Lebanon Army). In turn, the UN deploys an interposition force (UNIFIL) between the "security zone" and the Litani River with the mission of ensuring the demilitarization of the area. Between 1979 and 1981, the Christian community, through the Lebanese Phalanges, established a strategic alliance with Israel, once the one they had with Syria until then had been broken.

Israeli troops in southern Lebanon, June 1982.

En junio de 1982 junto al recrudecimiento de los incidentes armados en la frontera o dentro de Israel, se produce un atentado del grupo palestino de Abu Nidal contra Shlomo Argov, el embajador israelí en Londres. Pese a que Abu Nidal era un enemigo acérrimo de Yasir Arafat y de la OLP, Israel tomó este atentado como un casus belli para la invasión del Líbano, en una operación de grandes proporciones que denominará "Operación Paz para Galilea". Tres días después del atentado, el 6 de junio, un impresionante despliegue del Tsahal formado por casi 100 000 soldados (equivalente a ocho divisiones) y 1500 tanques, apoyados por la aviación y la marina, superaron la "zona de seguridad" y las fuerzas de la UNIFIL y profundizaron en territorio libanés. Aunque la idea declarada por el entonces ministro de Defensa, Ariel Sharón, era no superar 40 kilómetros, las fuerzas del Tsahal llegan hasta la periferia de Beirut y la carretera que la une con Damasco. El propio Sharon y Rafael Eitan señalarían con posterioridad que, pese a lo que habían afirmado públicamente en dicho momento, "el Gabinete israelí sabía por adelantado que el alcance de la operación no se limitaría a cuarenta kilómetros". Los palestinos ofrecieron una resistencia muy desigual y Siria aprovechó para reforzar sus propias unidades a la zona, añadiendo 30 000 soldados y 400 tanques de refuerzo. Israel destruyó el sistema de misiles antiaéreos sirio desplegado en la Bekaa libanesa y derribó 29 de los 100 aviones cazabombarderos que Siria había enviado, en lo que supuso la mayor batalla aérea desde la Guerra de Corea. El 11 de junio entró en vigor un alto el fuego impuesto por EE. UU. y exigido también por la URSS. Con la mediación estadounidense, comenzó la evacuación de casi 15 000 combatientes y burócratas de la OLP y también de algunos de los soldados sirios. Portaban su armamento ligero, en señal de capitulación honrosa: los sirios regresaron a su país por vía terrestre, y los palestinos fueron transportados a Chipre, desde donde se dispersaron por varios países (como Argelia, Yemen, Irak, Jordania o Sudán). La cúpula de la OLP, con Arafat a la cabeza, estableció su nuevo cuartel general en Túnez.

A few days later, the Lebanese Parliament, given the new correlation of forces, elected Christian-Maronite Bashir Gemayel as president, replacing Elias Sarkis, also a Maronite, who had exhausted his term. However, before taking office, Gemayel was killed by a Syrian agent, along with 29 other people who were at the Lebanese Phalanges headquarters in Beirut at the time. In revenge for the assassination, the Lebanese Phalanges entered the Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila, causing a civilian massacre in which between 460 and 3,500 Palestinian civilians were killed. An Israeli judicial commission of the highest level – the Kahan Commission – investigated what happened. He pointed to the Christian Phalangists as the material authors of the deaths, but accused Israel of "indirect responsibility" for not having avoided it, since the events had occurred under Israeli military control of the city. This verdict caused a deep impact on international opinion and on Israel itself, which removed the then Defense Minister, Ariel Sharon, from his post, although he remained in the cabinet as a minister without portfolio. In May 1983, Israel and Lebanon They reached an agreement for the withdrawal of Israeli troops. However, the peace treaty was never ratified, and in March 1984, under Syrian pressure, Lebanon canceled the agreement. Faced with the trickle of Israeli casualties and the constant Shiite attacks (with an average of 100 per month), Israel began its unilateral and progressive withdrawal in 1985, once again leaving the so-called "security zone" (about 850 km²) in the hands of the Christian-Lebanese (and pro-Israeli) South Lebanon Army, with a minor presence of Tsahal troops.

Finally, in May 2000, Ehud Barak, Israeli Prime Minister, fulfilled his election promise to withdraw all Israeli troops from southern Lebanon, in compliance with UN Security Council Resolution 425, which had been passed 22 years before. The UN verified in situ the Israeli withdrawal south of the international border. Shebaa Farms, a small 20 km² piece of land on the foot of Mount Hermon that the Israeli army seized from the Syrians in 1967, and which Beirut has long since claimed as its own, served Hezbollah (the pro-Iranian Shiite militia) as a pretext to continue its armed harassment against Israel and not to accept resolution 1559 of the UN Security Council, which forced it to disarm and leave control of the border in the hands of the Lebanese army.

Jerusalem

Modi'in Illit, one of the many Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

The status of Jerusalem remains one of the key points of contention in the Arab-Israeli conflict. Israel has always claimed Jerusalem as the religious and civil capital of the Jewish people. The Arabs, who controlled it for about 700 years (638-1513), or the Ottoman Turks, who ruled it for another 400 (1513-1917), or the Jordanians, who occupied it for another 19 years (1948-1967)., they never gave it any special status of national capital. United Nations General Assembly Resolution 181 partitioned the British Mandate of Palestine into an Arab and a Jewish state, but left the area of Jerusalem and Bethlehem as a corpus separatum to be administered by the United Nations, something that it later detailed in its resolution 303. However, the city was divided into two parts after the Arab-Israeli war of 1948. The western part of Jerusalem was proclaimed the capital of Israel in 1950, a movement which has not been recognized since then by any country in the world except the United States. The so-called East Jerusalem, which included the Old City, came under Jordanian control. During the 1967 Six-Day War, Israel conquered the Wailing Wall in the Old City, as well as the rest of the eastern part of the city that had been under Jordanian control since 1949, and administratively unified the municipality.

In 1980, Israel promulgated the Jerusalem Law, which declared the city, including the eastern part and a large peripheral area, as the "eternal and indivisible capital" of the State of Israel. The UN responded with resolution 478, which invalidated said declaration of capitality, and advised its members to locate their embassies in Tel Aviv. Only Costa Rica and El Salvador maintained, until August 2006, their embassies in Jerusalem, and both moved them to Tel Aviv after this date. Instead, the United States moved its embassy to Jerusalem on May 14, 2018. No country in the world has expressly recognized Israeli sovereignty over East Jerusalem; the US recognition of Israeli sovereignty over Jerusalem in 2017 was made only nominally and did not establish any position on borders within the city and, therefore, on East Jerusalem.

For its part, the Palestinian National Authority claims the eastern part of Jerusalem (Al-Quds) as the capital of the future Palestinian state. From 1964, when the PLO was born, until 1967, when Israel conquered East Jerusalem, the PLO did not raise the issue of capital. In 2002, this demand was ratified by a law signed by Yasir Arafat.[1].

The UN continues to maintain that the status of Jerusalem is that of an international city whose sovereignty must be resolved in future negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians, for which reason it classifies Israeli control over East Jerusalem as illegal occupation. In 2000, Yasir Arafat rejected a peace proposal from Prime Minister Ehud Barak which, among many other points, included leaving the Muslim and Christian Quarter of the city under Palestinian sovereignty.

Palestinians living in Jerusalem hold an Israeli document that allows them to move around Israel, but they do not have the right to vote in national elections unless they opt for Israeli nationality.

Since the conquest of East Jerusalem and the rest of the West Bank in 1967, Israel has expropriated and purchased land to create new Jewish settlements in East Jerusalem with the intention of consolidating the Jewish presence throughout the municipality.

The First Intifada (1987-1993)

On December 9, 1987, an Israeli military vehicle was involved in an accident in Gaza that killed four Palestinians. After 20 years of Israeli military occupation, the Palestinians began to challenge the Israeli troops. Spontaneously and unexpectedly by both the Israeli military authorities and the Palestinian leadership in exile, the Palestinian population began to organize acts of civil disobedience against the Israeli occupation, including strikes, demonstrations and other acts of protest. The Intifada supposed the grouping of all Palestinian sectors under a central leadership, politicizing the entire Palestinian society. The First Intifada highlighted the Israeli occupation of Palestine internationally and left iconic images of the conflict, such as Palestinian youths throwing stones at Israeli tanks. For its part, Israel deployed some 80,000 troops in the occupied territories and resorted to tactics such as mass arrests, deportations, curfews and administrative detention.

The international context also played an important role in the development of this popular uprising: the outbreak of the Gulf War in 1990, in which Israel sided with Kuwait while the Palestinian leadership supported Iraq, or the dissolution in 1991 of the USSR, a superpower that had supported the Palestinian cause in recent decades, dealt a severe blow to Palestinian aspirations. Some historians date the end of the First Intifada to 1991, with the Madrid Conference, while others take it to 1993, with the Oslo Accords. Regarding the number of victims, the First Intifada left a balance of 1,962 Palestinians and 277 Israelis dead.

The Oslo Accords

Oslo Accords, 13 September 1993. On the left, then Israeli Prime Minister Isaac Rabin (assisited two years later), in the center U.S. President Bill Clinton and on the right Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat (death in 2004).

In 1991 the Peace Conference was held in Madrid with the participation of Lebanon, Syria, Israel, Egypt and a Palestinian-Jordanian delegation. In this conference it was possible to agree on the establishment of future negotiations. In September 1993, the Oslo Accords were signed, which represented a historical milestone in that they implied the recognition of the State of Israel by the Palestinian leadership and the recognition of the PLO by Israel. For this reason, Israeli Prime Minister Isaac Rabin, his Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, and PLO Chairman Yasir Arafat were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1994. However, to achieve something like this, the Accords Oslo had to leave for future negotiations the thorniest aspects of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict: Israeli settlements in Palestinian territory, the status of Jerusalem, the final demarcation of borders and the right of return of Palestinian refugees.

The Oslo Accords provided for the return to the Palestinians of most of the territory occupied in 1967, in the Six-Day War, and for this purpose they developed a division of the West Bank into three areas of control: area A, of control Palestinian military and administrative; area B, under Israeli military control and Palestinian administrative control; and area C, which accounts for more than 60% of the territory, under full Israeli control. A series of dates were set for the withdrawal of Israeli forces from the occupied territories, with Gaza and Jericho the first cities in Palestinian history to come under the control of a Palestinian administration. The Palestinian National Authority was established as the administrative body that would exercise control over eight autonomous areas around major Palestinian cities.

However, a series of problems led to the failure of the Oslo Accords. In the first place, it was a general and ambiguous agreement that still had a lot to develop and that did not establish clear mechanisms to force any of the parties to comply with their commitments. Despite the fact that the Oslo Accords specified that "neither side will take initiatives or steps that change the status quo of the West Bank or the Gaza Strip until agreement is reached in negotiations on a status permanent", Israel continued with the illegal settlement of Jewish settlers in the territories that should have been returned to the Palestinian National Authority for the future establishment of a Palestinian state. For their part, different Palestinian armed organizations continued with their terrorist attacks against the Israeli civilian population. The numerous delays and cancellations of the agreed steps in the Israeli withdrawal schedule led to the stagnation of the peace process and the discredit of the Oslo Accords, whose image had greatly deteriorated among the Palestinian population towards the end of the decade.

The Second Intifada (2000-2005)

Launch of a Katiusha rocket from a civilian area in Gaza targeting southern Israel. Israel has made several interventions in Gaza on the basis of responding to Palestinian attacks.

Muro built by Israel on its border with the West Bank.

The then leader of the Israeli opposition, Ariel Sharon, visited the area outside the Dome of the Rock compound and the Al-Aqsa Mosque, in September 2000, in full debate on the future of Jerusalem but with the permission from the head of Palestinian security in the West Bank, which caused some incidents and clashes with Palestinians, as it was seen by the Palestinian population as a very serious provocation. The following day, during the Friday prayer, with the tension between the two populations increasing, hundreds of young Muslims stoned the Jews gathered before the Wall from the Mosques Esplanade. The Israeli police reacted, spreading the incidents throughout the Arab part of Jerusalem. It has been maintained that the Second Intifada began as a result of these events, although a commission to that effect, the so-called Mitchell Commission, ruled out this possibility, assuring that Palestinian violence would have broken out in any way as a result of Arafat's refusal to accept the Israeli Camp David proposals. Specifically, Bill Clinton and Ehud Barak, then Prime Minister of Israel, proposed a series of concessions that were not accepted by the "rais" Palestinian, by not contemplating the right of return of Palestinian refugees, a right recognized by the UN in 1948 and the main reason for the birth of the PLO. Arafat's refusal provoked the reaction of the Palestinian population of the occupied territories in response to the proposal of both presidents.

In response to this attack, and to the increasingly deteriorated and bogged down peace process, Israel reoccupies some of the territories it had liberated for hours or weeks. In this intifada, the use of suicide bombs began to be generalized. The targets of these suicide attacks were places frequented by Israeli civilians such as shopping malls, restaurants, and public transportation networks.

In response to suicide attacks by Palestinian armed organizations, the Israeli authorities carried out extrajudicial assassinations against Palestinian leaders linked to terrorist activities. These deaths are known by Israelis as selective killings, a euphemism popularized by some media, and which, in the opinion of their critics, constitute a violation of the Geneva Convention, which states in its point 1d that this type of crime "executions are and will remain prohibited at any time and place, without prior trial by an officially constituted court and assuming all the judicial guarantees recognized as essential in the countries civilized". This article applies to any person who "does not take an active part in hostilities, including members of the armed forces who have laid down their weapons" and those persons "out of action due to illness, wounds, detention or any other cause". However, Israel argues that the targets selected and killed are active parties in the hostilities, since they are the planners or instigators of terrorist activities within Israeli territory.

In 2006, the situation is ambivalent: on the one hand, the unilateral Israeli withdrawal plan from the Gaza Strip has been completed, which, far from calming the situation, was used by the Arabs as a strategic point for terrorist attacks with Qassam rockets against Israeli border towns such as Sederot. On the other hand, Israel maintains border control, making it difficult for Palestinians to travel abroad, and strictly monitors movement between Palestinian cities (more than 90 checkpoints are deployed on the highways). Palestinians not residing in Jerusalem are also not allowed to enter the city.

2006 Lebanon War

Israeli bombing of the city of Tyre in southern Lebanon in July 2006.

In July 2006, a group of Hezbollah fighters crossed the border from Lebanon into Israel, attacked and took two Israeli soldiers hostage. In a failed rescue raid, eight Israeli soldiers were killed in an ambush organized by Hezbollah. This group demanded the release of the Lebanese prisoners in Israel in exchange for the release of the captured soldiers, something Israel refused. This sparked the 2006 Lebanon War, which caused extensive destruction in Lebanon. A UN-sponsored ceasefire (Resolution 1701) went into effect on August 14, 2006, officially ending the conflict. The conflict killed more than 1,000 Lebanese and more than 150 Israelis, greatly damaged Lebanese civilian infrastructure, and displaced approximately 1 million Lebanese and 300,000 to 500,000 Israelis, although most were able to return to their homes. After the ceasefire, parts of southern Lebanon remained uninhabitable due to unexploded Israeli cluster bombs. The United Nations Interim Force for Lebanon was deployed.

Conflict in the Gaza Strip of 2008-2009

At the end of December 2008, the truce between Hamas and the Israeli army in the Gaza Strip ended. Israel launched its first attack in the Gaza Strip on December 27, 2008, in retaliation against Hamas for firing rockets from Gaza into Israel. The ceasefire was declared on January 18, 2009, when Israel and Hamas declared a cessation of military operations. Despite this, shells and rockets continued to be fired from Gaza towards Israeli civilian population centers, while the Israel Defense Forces continued its attacks on the Gaza Strip.

2010 Gaza flotilla attack

The MV Mavi Marmara leaving Antalya heading for Gaza on 22 May 2010. It was one of the ships boarded.

The name of the attack on the Gaza flotilla is popularly known as a violent incident that occurred on May 31, 2010, when the Israeli Navy boarded a flotilla of six vessels from the pro-Palestinian organization Free Gaza (called the "Fleet of Gaza"). of Freedom") in international waters of the Mediterranean Sea. Israeli commandos killed nine activists and injured more than thirty people. One of the wounded, who was in a coma for four years, died in May 2014, bringing the death toll to 10.

Operation Defensive Pillar (2012)

An Israeli AH-64 Apache helicopter, used as a platform to fire guided missiles against Palestinian targets in the framework of the policy of targeted killings against militants and political leaders.

On November 13, two Syrian shells fall on the Golan Heights in northern Israel, in addition to the current escalation - which began on Saturday afternoon, November 10, with the Palestinian missile against a jeep patrolling the border with Gaza (four wounded soldiers) and the 120 missiles and rockets against the south of the country fired by the Islamist group Hamas and other armed factions in Gaza, in response to these attacks, on November 14, 2012 Israel declares war on the Gaza Strip, launching an offensive with missiles and bombardments of cities in Gaza, leaving six dead, including commander Azedin Al Qasem, and dozens injured.

At the height of the conflict, on October 23, the emir of Qatar Hamad bin Khalifa al Thani made a lightning visit to the Gaza area, the first by a head of state since Hamas took power in 2007. This visit is especially disturbing to the Israeli authorities, who see the emir as a source of financing for the Hamas government. Israel's response is not long in coming, carrying out selective attacks from October 24 to November 10.

After a few days of relative calm, Israel launches its most wounding attack: on November 14, it assassinates Ahmed Jabari, a member of the Hamas government and Hamas's top military official. In this way, one of the most influential leaders of Hamas dies. Hamas, becoming the assassination of a most important politician since 2008. This was the turning point that caused the escalation of violence, considering from that moment on as an act of war, with all its consequences.

Hamas arouses certain sympathy in its environment, such as that of Egyptian Prime Minister Hisham Kandil, who visits the Gaza Strip the next day, expressing his support for the Hamas government. This strategic move is especially significant and clarifies the Egyptian position regarding the Palestinian conflict after the revolution in the framework of the "Arab Spring". The Egyptian-Palestinian alliance is particularly worrying to the Israeli authorities, since Egypt does have an army professional and considerable firepower. In the same way, memories of the Yom Kippur war in 1973 are aired, a lightning war in which Egyptian and Syrian troops invaded part of the Israeli territory acquired in the framework of the Six-Day War in 1967 (In this conflict, Israel carried out a relentless counter-offensive, even invading Egyptian territory (Israeli troops stopped 100 km from Cairo after signing the ceasefire).

In this context, and until the signing of a ceasefire on November 21, 2012, there were countless attacks from both sides. It is worth noting the impact of two Palestinian rockets in Jerusalem, which had not received hits since 1991, and three in Tel Aviv and its metropolitan area, two cities that enjoyed some security from Palestinian attacks. The rockets caused no material or human damage in Jerusalem, falling in a barren area on the outskirts. In Tel Aviv, the first did not cause any damage, the second was intercepted by the Iron Dome system, and the third caused damage to a residential building on the outskirts, leaving two minor injuries.

According to data published by the World Health Organization on November 22, the conflict produced a balance of 165 Palestinian deaths, of which 42 (26%) are children, and 1,269 wounded, of which 431 (34%) were) are children. According to a statement by the UN Secretary General on November 21, on the Israeli side there were four deaths and 219 wounded, most of them civilians, three of them seriously. One Israeli soldier was killed and 16 wounded, one seriously, who later died.

The Syrian Civil War (2011-present)

Since 2012 there have been some clashes on the Golan Heights between Israel and Syria, in the context of the Syrian Civil War. However, this escalation of tensions came to a head on May 5, 2013, when there was speculation that Israel bombed a shipment of Iranian weapons in Syria destined for Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Conflict against Iran (1979-present)

Arak Nuclear Plant in Arak, Iran

The Iranian-Israeli proxy war is a conflict whose main basis is the political struggle between the Islamic Republic of Iran and the State of Israel because since the rise of theocratic republicanism of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in Iran this has been has become an enemy of the Jewish state. Israel has also sought to weaken and eliminate regional political allies such as Hezbollah in Lebanon, and Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Palestine.

This conflict has worsened since the beginning of the XXI century, when Iran's nuclear program became evident, something that for the Israeli authorities is unacceptable because in their view a nuclear-armed Iran would be an "existential threat to Israel." Israel has boycotted the development of the Iranian nuclear program in various ways (assassination of Iranian nuclear scientists, cyber warfare...). Israel also blames Iran for being behind attacks in other countries such as the attack on the Israeli embassy in Argentina in 1992 or the attack on the AMIA in 1994.

Following the riots of the Arab Spring in 2011 and the outbreak of the Syrian Civil War, Iran has supported the Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad and has sent troops (Revolutionary Guards) to that country.

The intervention of the United Nations and the world

The 1947 Partition Plan

On November 29, 1947, the United Nations General Assembly, meeting in New York, approved Resolution 181, which recommended a plan to resolve the conflict between Jews and Arabs in the region of Palestine, which was in those moments under British administration. The UN plan called for dividing the western part of the Mandate into two states, one Jewish and one Arab, with an area, including Jerusalem and Bethlehem, under international control. The inability of the British government to carry out this plan, together with the refusal of the Arab countries of the region to accept it, resulted in the Arab-Israeli war of 1948.

Roadmap for peace 2003

On April 30, 2003, the Government of Israel and the Palestinian Authority are presented with a road map drawn up by the Quartet (United States, European Union, Russia and the United Nations) to achieve peace between Israel and Palestine taking maximum term 2005. Full text

In Phase I of this Roadmap, the necessary bases are established for the initiation of a gradual process of effective peace between Israel and Palestine: the end of terror and violence, normalization of Palestinian life and the creation of Palestinian institutions.

Phase II establishes the bases for the gradual withdrawal of Israeli forces from the territories occupied since 2000, the freezing of the Israeli settlement policy, the continued dismantling of terrorist organizations and the consolidation of Palestinian institutions.

Phase III lays the groundwork for a permanent status and final end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

On November 19, seeing the lack of support for the Roadmap between the two affected parties, the United Nations issued resolution 1515 in which they endorsed the Roadmap and urged the parties to collaborate in the search for a peaceful solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Key UN Resolutions on the Arab-Israeli Conflict

The most important Resolutions in the Arab-Israeli conflict are:

• General Assembly resolution 181 of 29 November 1947. It establishes the partition of Palestine, under British protectorate, in two states, one Jewish and one Arab, and leaves Jerusalem under international control.
• Resolution 194 of 11 December 1948. It orders the return or compensation of Palestinian refugees to their homes, after their expulsion by the Israeli forces.
• Security Council resolution 242 of 22 November 1967. It orders the Israeli withdrawal from the newly occupied territories of Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem in the Six Days War, and proclaims the right to sovereignty, secure borders and to live in peace of the States already constituted in the region.
• Security Council resolution 338 of 22 October 1973. It calls for the immediate ceasefire in the Arab-Israeli war of Yom Kippur, in which Egypt and Syria launched an attack on Israeli positions on the Suez Canal and the Golan Heights. It also calls for the immediate implementation of resolution 242 and the start of peace talks.
• Security Council resolution 1397 of 12 March 2002. A year and a half after the beginning of the second Intifada, it supports for the first time the creation of a Palestinian State, living next to the Israeli "with recognized and secure borders". It calls for the cessation of violence and the return to peace negotiations.

Cost of conflict

In human lives, estimates range from 51,000 deaths (35,000 Arabs and 16,000 Israelis from 1950 to 2007, to 92,000 deaths (74,000 military and 18,000 civilians) between 1945 and 1995.

A report by the Strategic Foresight Group (an India-based think tank) has estimated the opportunity cost of the conflict in the Middle East at some US$12 trillion between 1991 and 2010. The report calculates the hypothetical GDP of Middle Eastern countries by comparing current GDP with potential peacetime GDP. The corresponding to Israel would be one trillion dollars, while Iraq and Saudi Arabia would correspond to 2.2 and 4.5 trillion, respectively. In other words, if there had been peace and cooperation between Israel and the Arab countries since 1991, an average Israeli citizen could have earned an annual income of $44,000, instead of $23,000 in 2010.

Timeline

Political or historically important events

• 1883: The first wave of mass immigration of Jews to Palestine begins, known as Aliyah. Around 35 000 Jews arrived in Palestine for the next two decades, mostly from Eastern Europe and Russia, pushed by successive pogroms and by the anti-Semitism prevailing in the Europe of the time.
• 1896: Theodor Herzl publica The Jewish State, considered as one of the origins of the Zionist movement, which enhances Jewish emigration to Palestine with the ultimate aim of creating a Jewish state.
• 1904: The second Aliyah begins, which until 1914 leads about 40 000 Jews (especially Russians) to settle in Palestinian lands.
• 1917: The British government issues the Balfour Declaration, in which it "contemplates the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people and will make use of its best efforts to facilitate the realization of this goal, it is clear that nothing will be done to prejudice the civil and religious rights of the non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status of the Jews in any other country."
• 1919: After a brief interruption in the First World War, Jewish immigration to Palestine was renewed with the third Aliyah, which in just four years led to 40 000 Jewish migrants to settle in Palestine, most of them from Eastern Europe.
• 1920: The Haganah is born, the embryo of the future Israeli army, as a paramilitary organization of Jewish self-defense.
• 1922: The British Mandate of Palestine entered into force for the commission of the League of Nations. This is how the British presence in Palestine is formed, territory already controlled de facto since 1917, having expelled the Ottoman forces during the First World War.
• 1924: Some 82 000 Jewish immigrants, especially from Poland, arrive in Palestine during the fourth Aliyah, between 1924 and 1929.
• 1929: The fifth Aliyah begins, which during the next decade would bring to Palestine some 250 000 Jews, most of them from Eastern Europe and Germany, greatly influenced by the rise to power of the National Socialist Party in Germany (1933).
• 1929: The growing inter-communal conflicts between the indigenous Palestinian population and Jewish immigrants, as well as an inflammatory speech by the Great Mufti of Jerusalem Amin al-Husayni, trigger the Hebron massacre, whose balance was 135 Jews killed by Arabs, 110 Arabs killed by the British police while attempting to quench the revolt and 6 or 7 Arabs (depending on the sources) killed by Jews. The British authorities decide to move the rest of the Jewish population of Hebron out of the city.
• 1931: Irgun was born, a Jewish paramilitary organization responsible for numerous terrorist acts against British army officers and Palestinian Arab civilians.
• 1936: It is an important Arab revolt against the British rule of Palestine and against the continued waves of Jewish immigration. In the next three years, the British control of the region was about to collapse, but finally the revolt is crushed by the death or imprisonment of the leading Palestinian leaders, the massive apprenticeship of weapons and the dismantling of the main Palestinian social organizations, which would decisively influence the armed conflicts of the following decade.
• 1937: In the context of the Arab revolt of Palestine, the British government commissions a commission headed by Lord Peel to investigate the reasons for the general unrest in the British Mandate of Palestine and the frequent clashes between communities. The Peel Commission blames the discomfort of the desire for Arab independence, the fear of Jewish domination, the news of the independence of Iraq, Egypt, Syria, Transjordania and Lebanon, the waves of Jewish immigrants, the lack of Arab opportunities regarding the Jews in the resources to the Mandate authorities, the alarm for the continued purchase of land by Jewish entities and the ambiguity of the British authorities with respect to the future. For the first time, the partition of the Mandate is recommended in an Arab State and another Jew.
• 1939: The British parliament approves the so-called White Book, a document that in practice revokes what was stated in the Balfour Declaration and expresses that the Jewish national home preconceded by it should be built within a single plurinational State in Palestine, in which the demographic majority at that time was Palestinian Arab. This document also limited Jewish immigration to a quota of 75 000 immigrants for a period of 5 years.
• 1940: A new Jewish paramilitary group emerges with the name of Leji, who will be responsible for numerous political murders and attacks on civilian targets.
• 1947: On 29 November, the United Nations partition plan, which provided for the division of Palestine into two States - a Jewish State and an Arab State, was approved. It breaks down the civil war in the British Mandate of Palestine. The expulsion or flight of much of the Palestinian population begins in a process known as Nakba.
• 1948: On 14 May, David Ben-Gurion declared the establishment of the State of Israel. One day later the Arab-Israeli war of 1948 begins. The Nakba continues to something after the end of the war and leaves over 700,000 Palestinian civilians in exile.
• 1949: More than one million Jewish refugees and immigrants from Muslim countries and a quarter of a million Holocaust survivors arrive in Israel between their date of creation and early 1960s.
• 1952: Revolution in Egypt, in which the Free Officers Movement defeats King Faruq. The idea of panarabism is resurrected under the figure of Gamal Abdel Nasser.
• 1956: War of Suez or Sinai (from 27 October to 7 November). Following the nationalization of the Suez Canal by Egypt, the Israeli army invaded the Sinai Peninsula in coordination with the armies of France and the United Kingdom. Thanks to the pressures exerted by the United States and the Soviet Union, the conflict ends with the status quo ante bellum except for the opening to the Israeli maritime traffic of the Straits of Tiran. The Republic of Sudan is independent of the United Kingdom.
• 1957: Israel begins the construction of the Dimona nuclear power plant with French support, thus starting an Israeli nuclear program that has never been verified.
• 1958: Yasir Arafat, Salah Khalaf and Khalil al-Wazir founded in Kuwait the Palestinian organization Fatah, which a future would be the core of the Palestine Liberation Organization.
• 1964: The Palestine Liberation Organization, which integrates the various Palestinian political and paramilitary movements, is born.
• 1967: War of 6 days (from 5 to 10 July). The Israeli army bombards the Egyptian air bases starting the war. Syria, Jordan and Iraq, allies of Egypt, quickly join the contest. Israel wins overwhelmingly and militarily occupies the Sinai Peninsula and the Gaza Strip of Egypt, the West Bank and East Jerusalem of Jordan, and the Syrian Golan Heights. Except for the Sinai Peninsula, which would be returned to Egypt after the Peace Accords of Camp David, the rest remain occupied today. On 1 September, Khartoum ' s resolution was adopted, also known as that of the three noes, whereby the Arab States undertook not to sign peace, not to formally recognize and not to negotiate with Israel.
• 1970: Black September in Jordan. Expelled from their bases in the West Bank, Palestinian militias are seated and gaining weight in Jordan, where there is already a significant volume of Palestinian population. Following an attempted murder of King Huséin I of Jordan, the Jordanian army attacks Palestinian militias and drives the PLO out of the country. Most Palestinian groups settle in Lebanon.
• 1972: Masacre of Munich. Murder of 11 Jewish athletes and 1 police by the September Black terrorist group at the Munich Olympic Games. Five terrorists died. In two days Israel attacks the PLO bases in Syria and Lebanon.
• 1973: Yom Kipur War (October 2-25). Egypt and Syria co-ordinatedly attack Israel. Although they initially achieved a series of victories, Israel ended up reponsing and reconquering all the lost terrain. The war ends once more with the status quo ante bellum following United Nations Security Council resolution 338.
• 1974: The UN recognizes the PLO as the only legitimate representative of the Palestinian people. Address by Yasir Arafat to the United Nations General Assembly. The Gush Emunim movement is born to promote Jewish religious settlements in the West Bank.
• 1975: Lebanese civil war begins (1975-1990). For more than fifteen years, this war involved numerous ethnic and religious groups and even international forces fighting among themselves: Sunni Muslims, Shia Muslims, Maronite Christians, Palestinian refugees, Syrian and Israeli armies and international interposition forces. It caused approximately 120 000 deaths and the devastation of the country.
• 1976: An Israeli command releases a group of passengers abducted on a plane at Entebbe Airport (Uganda).
• 1977: Egyptian President Anwar el-Sadat travels to Jerusalem on the first journey of an Egyptian leader to Israel.
• 1978: Israel invades southern Lebanon in response to a Palestinian attack in Operation Litani. Jimmy Carter, Anwar el-Sadat and Menájem Beguín signed the Camp David agreements, which are the signing of a peace treaty and the normalization of relations between Egypt and Israel in exchange for the end of the Israeli occupation of the Sinai Peninsula.
• 1980: Israel approves the law of Jerusalem, which declares that city as its capital. In response, the United Nations Security Council adopts its resolution 478, which declares this law as a violation of international law and censorship “in the strongest terms”, stating that “it poses a serious obstacle to the achievement of a complete, just and lasting peace”. On the proposal of the UN, all States withdraw their embassies from Jerusalem and move them to Tel Aviv or other Israeli cities.
• 1981: The Israeli air force destroys the Osirak nuclear reactor in Iraq, which was being built with French support.
• 1982: The Israeli ambassador to the United Kingdom, Shlomo Argov, suffers from an attack by the Palestinian group of Abu Nidal, a rival of the PLO. Israel blames the latter and invades Lebanon for the declared purpose of expelling the PLO from this country. The Israeli army began the Beirut site, which left behind the march of thousands of Palestinian militias to Tunisia. Shortly after the exile of the Palestinian militias, the Sabra and Chatila massacre took place, where between 460 and 6000 Palestinian civilians were killed by the Lebanese Christian phalanges with the collaboration of the Israeli army. Israel would maintain its occupation of southern Lebanon until the year 2000.
• 1983: In the context of the Lebanese civil war, the attack on international forces in Beirut took place, which resulted in the death of 241 U.S. Marines, 58 French paratroopers and 6 Lebanese civilians. In response to the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, the political party and paramilitary group Hezbollah were born, which originated in an Amal Movement split.
• 1984: Yasir Arafat consolidates his authority as the highest leader of the Palestinian national movement. Israel is making a massive evacuation of Ethiopian Jews from Sudan.
• 1985: A rupture of the Palestinian agreement with Jordan on shared sovereignty in the West Bank. Israel launches a major offensive in Lebanon and launches an air attack on the headquarters of the O.L.P. in Tunisia.
• 1987: First Intifada (1987-1993), Palestinian popular movement in the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and East Jerusalem against Israeli forces in order to end the occupation. In April, during the session of the Palestinian National Council in Algiers, Yasir Arafat achieved the reunification of the O.L.P. under his command.
• 1988: In August, King Huséin of Jordan gave the Palestinians his rights over the West Bank. In November, Yasir Arafat proclaimed from Algiers the declaration of independence of Palestine and accepted UN resolution 242.
• 1989: In April, Arafat is appointed first Palestinian president by the Central Committee of the O.L.P. At the Casablanca Conference, the Arab League accepts previous UN resolutions and supports the First Intifada. Egypt is readmitted in the Arab League and the headquarters returns to Cairo. In December, the UN approves the name of Palestine in its texts.
• 1990: In March Israeli laborers break the coalition with the Likud for their intransigence. The Likud governs in coalition with nationalist and religious fundamentalist groups. The massacre of Jerusalem took place, leading to a condemnation of the UN Security Council against Israel. The Gulf War explodes after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. Saddam Hussein states that he will abandon the occupation of Kuwait as soon as Israel does the same with Palestine, so the O.L.P. aligns itself in favor of Iraq and against the US-led alliance. U.S. The mass immigration of Jews from the USSR begins, with the Arab League protesting.
• 1991: In the context of the Gulf War, Iraq launches 39 Scud missiles against Israel, which at the request of the US. The U.S. does not respond to the attack. Iraq is defeated in the Gulf War, which weakens Arafat's position in the Palestinian liberation movement. Following the Gulf War, the Baker plan failed because of Israel ' s refusal to represent the Palestinians and to accept the principle of peace for territories. In September, Arafat is re-elected by the Palestinian National Council as Chairman of the Executive Committee. In October, the Peace Conference on the Middle East was held in Madrid with the participation of Israeli, Syrian, Jordanian, Lebanese and Palestinian representatives for the first time since 1949.
• 1993: Oslo Accords: The PLO formally recognizes Israel, and Israel recognizes the Palestinian National Authority as the representative of the Palestinian people. A number of deadlines are set for the establishment of a future State of Palestine, including the progressive Israeli withdrawal of major Palestinian cities, the division of the West Bank in three areas with different levels of Israeli and Palestinian control, the transfer of educational, cultural, health, social, tax and tourist skills, as well as the establishment of a Palestinian police. The most complex issues of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (Jerusalem, Palestine refugees, final borders, Israeli settlements and security issues) are left for future negotiations.
• 1994: On 25 February the Hebron massacre took place, in which a Jewish terrorist killed 29 faithful while praying at the Mosque of Ibrahim in the city of Hebron. In May the Gaza-Jericó Agreement was signed, which states that these two Palestinian cities will be the first to be abandoned by the Israeli army. In October, the Jordanian-Israeli peace treaty was signed, by which Jordan became the second Arab State (after Egypt) to sign a peace treaty with Israel. In December, Isaac Rabin, Shimon Peres and Yasir Arafat received the Nobel Peace Prize.
• 1995: Isaac Rabin is killed by a Jewish extremist opposed to the Oslo peace agreements.
• 1996: Following new suicide bombings by Hamas that killed 32 people, Arafat declared the state of emergency and detained three of the Hamas leaders. The Sharm el Sheij (Egypt) counter-terrorism summit condemns the wave of attacks against Israel. In August the Israeli government authorized the construction of 900 new homes for settlers in the West Bank. Arafat qualifies him as a declaration of war, after which he calls for half a day of general strike. The Council of Ministers for Foreign Affairs of the EU is ruling against the Israeli occupation of East Jerusalem. In October, the negotiations taking place in the White House fail.
• 1997: In January, an agreement is reached for the withdrawal of Israeli forces deployed in Hebron, although the city is divided into two areas: H1, with 85% of the territory and some 200,000 Palestinian inhabitants, and H2, with 15% of the territory and about 800 Israeli settlers. In March, Arafat states during the Arab League meeting in Cairo that if Israel persists in its intention to destroy the peace process, as evidenced by the maintenance of its Jewish settlement policy in East Jerusalem, the Palestinian National Authority could unilaterally declare an independent Palestinian State in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. In June, an intifada rebrote begins in Hebron and causes more than a hundred wounded in the first four days. In July, a commission of inquiry by the Palestinian parliament recommended the removal of all ministers to address serious corruption and embezzlement. Two Hamas suicides kill 14 people and wound 150 people in the Majané Yejuda market. Peace negotiations are suspended. Arafat orders a raid on Hamas and the Islamic Jihad. Israel orders the arrest of the Palestinian police chief.
• 1998: In October, the peace process established in Oslo was relaunched for a year and a half by the Israeli policy of illegal settlements.
• 1999: Peace talks continue, the progress of which is reflected in the Sharm el Sheij Memorandum, in which advances are made in matters of territory, prisoners, security, the port of Gaza or the city of Hebron.
• 2000: In May, Israel withdraws from southern Lebanon after 25 years of occupation, although the Lebanese authorities maintain that the Shebaa Farms are still occupied. The Camp David Summit took place in July, where Palestinian President Yasir Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak met with U.S. President Bill Clinton to try to reach a permanent peace agreement. Barak faces criticism of the concessions made to the Palestinian National Authority in the peace negotiations. Arafat announces that it will declare an independent Palestinian State on its own, while Israel proposes a certain Palestinian autonomy in the East Jerusalem neighbourhoods. Finally, the summit does not prosper and both sides blame the other part of the failure. After a visit by the then Israeli opposition leader Ariel Sharon to the Jerusalem Mosque Explanation, the Second Intifada explodes. Clinton is trying to re-certify Barak and Arafat at the Millennium Summit, but he fails for a disagreement around Jerusalem. Barak launches an ultimatum to Arafat while Clinton and Kofi Annan try to bring together the leaders of Israel and Palestine. Barak meets with the opposition of his country to form a unity government. The escalation of violence continues and Arafat calls for the deployment of a peace force, while Clinton fails again in her attempts to obtain peace.
• 2001: Peace talks continue at the Taba Summit (21-27 January), after which the negotiators of both sides recognize that they had never been so close to a final agreement. The following month, Ariel Sharon wins the Israeli elections and becomes the new prime minister, so Barak withdraws all his proposals made until then in the peace talks. Sharon denies the UN Israeli cooperation for a commission of inquiry and orders to bomb Palestinian positions. Arafat states that the intifada will continue until Jerusalem is the Palestinian capital. Negotiating attempts fail for the various violent acts between the parties. Israel closes the East House, a Palestinian emblem, while the UN calls for the deployment of international observers. The Palestinian leader is attempting a dialogue with Israel and both the United States and the United Kingdom are supporting the establishment of a Palestinian State.
• 2002: Violence is increased in the context of the Second Intifada. At the March Beirut Summit, the Arab League launched the Arab Peace Initiative, which proposed the immediate recognition of Israel by all Arab States in exchange for the end of the occupation of Palestine. The Netanya massacre is almost simultaneously taking place, in which a Palestinian suicide bomber kills 29 Israelis at a hotel in the city of Netanya. By the end of March, Israel launched the Defensive Shield Operation and resumed all Palestinian cities that it had abandoned in accordance with the Oslo Accords. In April, the battle of Yenin, which the Palestinians thwart of massacre, and the siege of the Basilica of the Nativity of Bethlehem, in which a group of Palestinian militias had taken refuge. In June the construction of the separation wall of the West Bank begins. In July, Israel assassinated Salah Shehade, leader of Hamas' military arm, and 15 others in the vicinity.
• 2003: Violence related to the Intifada continues. In March, U.S. activist Rachel Corrie died crushed by an Israeli bulldozer. In June the Road Map for Peace was announced, a new attempt to channel the peace talks.
• 2004: In March and April, Israeli attacks end the lives of Hamas leaders Ahmed Yassin and Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi, as well as with thirteen more people near them. In May, Israel launched the so-called Arcoíris Operation, which represents the demolition of more than 250 Palestinian homes in the city of Rafah. In July, the International Court of Justice ruled that the Israeli separation wall in the West Bank was a violation of international law. In October, Israel launched Operation Prison Days, which resulted in the death of 133 Palestinians. On November 11, Yasir Arafat died in Paris.
• 2005: Violence is gradually decaying throughout this year, so many sources consider it the last of the Second Intifada. In August, Israel unilaterally withdraws from the Gaza Strip.
• 2006: Second Lebanon War (from July 12 to August 14). Israel invaded Lebanon again after a skirmish in which Hezbollah killed three Israeli soldiers and captured two others. The war ended with the death of 250 Israeli militias from Hezbollah and 121 Israeli soldiers, as well as over a thousand Lebanese civilians and over 40 Israeli civilians, causing enormous devastation in Lebanon. In January, Hamas had won the Palestinian parliamentary elections. In June, a Palestinian command ambushed an Israeli patrol and captured Corporal Guilad Schalit, following a series of clashes.
• 2007: After Hamas' seizure of power in the Gaza Strip, Israel and Egypt decree the blockade of this Palestinian territory. In September, the Israeli air force destroyed the Deir ez-Zor nuclear installation in Syria, although that action would only be recognized in 2018. In November, the Annapolis Conference formally established the two-State solution as the basis for future Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations.
• 2008: Conflict in the Gaza Strip from 2008-2009 (from 27 December to 18 January). Israel launches a series of bombings on Hamas positions in the Gaza Strip, followed by an offensive on land, sea and air. The war was waged by more than 1,300 Palestinians killed, at least half of whom were civilians, and with 11 Israeli soldiers and 3 Israeli civilians killed.
• 2010: In May, a group of activists try to break the Israeli blockade with a flotilla of ships with humanitarian aid. An Israeli command raided the convoy in international waters resulting from 10 dead activists.
• 2011: Hamas releases Corporal Guilad Schalit in exchange for Israel's release of 1027 Palestinian prisoners.
• 2012: Operation Pillar of Defense (from 14 to 21 November). Following a series of border clashes, Israel begins Operation Pilar Defensive with the murder of Ahmed Yabari, leader of Hamas' military wing. The launch of Palestinian rockets and Israeli air strikes ended with the ceasefire one week later.
• 2014: Conflict between the Gaza Strip and Israel from 8 July to 26 August 2014 Tension begins to rise again after the death in a few days of two young Palestinians in Beitunia, three Israeli boys in the settlements of Gush Etzion and a young Palestinian in East Jerusalem. The conflict, which included a major Israeli land offensive in the Gaza Strip, a series of cross-border incursions of Palestinian commands and an exchange of Palestinian rocket launches and Israeli bombings, resulted in the most costly human lives of all those between Israeli forces and Hamas militias.
• 2015: In October a wave of attacks against Israeli civilians or military personnel begins mainly in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, informally known in the media as the Intifada de los Cuchillos.
• 2016: In December, the UN Security Council adopted resolution 2334, in which it reaffirmed that the Israeli settlements in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights “have no legal validity” and described them as a “flagrant violation” of international law.
• 2018: A series of demonstrations and marches that claim the right of return of Palestinian refugees are beginning in the Gaza Strip. Israeli forces stationed on the border prevent the passing of protesters violently, causing at least 312 deaths.
• 2020: Several Arab countries (United Arab Emirates, Baréin, Sudan and Morocco) announce the normalization of relations with Israel.
• 2021: Conflict between the Gaza Strip and Israel from 6 to 21 May. A series of events in Jerusalem, such as the imminent eviction of several Palestinian families in the Sheij Yarrah neighbourhood or the confrontation of Israeli police and Palestinian faithful in the Al-Aqsa Mosque, triggered this new conflict that began with the launch of several rockets by Hamas. For three weeks of fighting, 253 people died in the Gaza Strip and 13 others in Israel.

Filmography

Movie poster Exodus (1960).

There is an extensive filmography on the Arab-Israeli conflict that covers practically its entire history. About the intercommunal conflicts typical of the time of the British Mandate for Palestine, the British series The Promise deals with the birth of the Haganah and its fight against British troops, as well as the beginning of the Nakba and, in in particular, the bombing of the Palestinian civilian population in the city of Haifa. The 1948 Arab-Israeli war has been covered in various American films, almost always providing the Israeli point of view, as in the case of Exodus, starring Paul Newman, or The Shadow of a Giant, starring Kirk Douglas. Miral, by the American Julian Schnabel, deals with the expulsion and flight of the Palestinian population before the thrust of the Israeli army in 1948, known as the Nakba. The miniseries The Spy chronicles the life of Israeli spy Eli Cohen, whose work in Syria greatly aided Israel during the 1967 Six-Day War, a conflict that forms the backdrop of Avanti Popolo, an Israeli film that narrates the odysseys of Egyptian and Israeli soldiers lost in the Sinai desert. The film Munich follows the Mossad command that searched for and killed the Palestinian militiamen who attacked the Israeli expedition at the Munich Olympic Games in 1972. The period between the wars from 1967 to 1973 is portrayed in the film American film The Angel, which shows the life of Ashraf Marwan, Gamal Abdel Nasser's son-in-law and Israeli spy (or double agent). The Lebanese civil war and its consequent humanitarian disasters are reflected in films such as Incendies, by Denis Villeneuve, or in the Lebanese films West Beirut and El Insulto, which also describe the current situation of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon. The Israeli invasion of Lebanon (1982) and the subsequent massacre of Palestinian refugees in the Sabra and Shatila camps is depicted in the Israeli animated film Waltz with Bashir, while the Israeli series Hatufim (on which the US film Homeland was based) depicts the lives of several Israeli prisoners of war captured in the Lebanon War and released 17 years later. Yigal Amir's assassination of Isaac Rabin is the subject of the Israeli film Incitement, while the Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon (2000) is the backdrop for the Israeli film Beaufort. The Second Palestinian Intifada has produced films such as Paradise Now, by Hany Abu-Assad, which criticizes the modus operandi of Palestinian suicide bombers against Israel. The situation in the Gaza Strip since Israel imposed a land, sea and air blockade in 2007 has been reflected in films such as A Bottle in the Gaza Sea, by Thierry Benisti or The Idol, by Hany Abu-Assad. More generally, the Israeli occupation of Palestine is the protagonist in films such as The Lemon Trees, by Israeli director Eran Riklis; Foxtrot, by Israeli Samuel Maoz; The Salt of This Sea, by the Palestinian director Annemarie Jacir; Omar, by Palestinian director Hany Abu-Assad; Inch'Allah, by French director Anaïs Barbeau-Lavalette; The Attack, by the Lebanese Ziad Doueiri, or in the Israeli series Our Boys, by Hagai Levi, and Fauda, by Lior Raz and Avi Issacharoff, as well as in the British The Honorable Woman. Finally, the situation of Israelis of Palestinian origin is reflected in films such as Wedding in Galilee, Wajib or The Other's Son.

Scene of the film Vals with Bashir (2008).

The Arab-Israeli conflict has also been extensively depicted in the documentary genre, such as Al-Nakba, which documents the exodus of some 750,000 Palestinians during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. The Oslo Diaries reflects the secret peace negotiations that ended up triggering the Oslo Accords. Other documentaries related to the Arab-Israeli conflict are Promises, which shows the point of view of four Israeli boys and three Palestinians who live twenty minutes away from each other, but grow up in completely different universes; 5 Broken Cameras, by Palestinian Emad Burnat, describing protests against the Israeli separation wall in the Palestinian village of Bil'in; Born in Gaza, which describes the psychological and physical toll on a group of children as a result of Israeli shelling in the 2014 Gaza War; Jenin, Jenin, by Palestinian Mohammad Bakri, which describes the events surrounding the Battle of Jenin in 2002, during the Second Palestinian Intifada; or Occupation 101, which analyzes the legal and economic aspects of the Israeli occupation.