The Arab-Israeli conflict has gone on for so many years it’s difficult to know the background. I thought I would do some research and share my findings with those who read this.

This article is much longer than the stuff I usually write, but if you want to understand what history tells us about the Jews and the Palestinians, it might be worth the time needed to read it.

Early History of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.

1700 B.C.

• Abraham and his wife, Sara, can’t have children.
  • Sara lets Abraham be with her Egyptian maidservant, Hagar.
  • She becomes pregnant and has a son called Ishmael.
  • He eventually has 12 sons, and they settle in what is known as the Arabian Peninsula.
  • Ishmael is credited with being the father of many Arab nations.
• Abraham and Sara then get pregnant and have a son called Isaac.
  • Abraham, his son Isaac, and grandson Jacob settle in Canaan, the area now known as Israel, the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and parts of Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan.
  • This area is later given the name “The Land of Israel” or The Holy Land.

1000 B.C.

• King Saul establishes the Israelite Monarchy.
• It’s ruled by King David.
• He makes Jerusalem the capital of his kingdom.

957 B.C.

• David’s son, King Solomon, built the first temple on Mount Moriah in Jerusalem.

931 B.C.

• After Solomon dies, the kingdom is split into two parts.
  • Kingdom of Israel in the north: the capital is Samaria.
  • Kingdom of Judah in the south: Jerusalem is the capital.

• This land becomes home to a majority of the Jews.
• It is conquered numerous times, which leads to a significant reduction in the Jewish population in the two kingdoms.

722 B.C.

• Assyrian exile occurs and many Israelites of the Northern Kingdom of Israel become captives in Assyria, today modern Syria and Iraq.

586 B.C.

• Babylonian exile  happens.
• Siege of Jerusalem. 
• Solomon’s temple was destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar II.

521 B.C.

• Many Jews return to “Israel” from Babylonian exile.
• The Second Temple, later known as Herod’s Temple, is reconstructed in Jerusalem.

66-70 A.D..

• The Jewish Revolt.
  • The First Jewish-Roman War began in AD 66.
  • The revolt was a reaction to political and religious tensions and instances of Roman misrule.
  • The Jewish rebels expel a small Roman garrison stationed in Jerusalem.

The Siege of Jerusalem.

70 A.D.

• Rome dispatches a larger force to put down the rebellion.
• The result is the destruction of the second temple and the city of Jerusalem. 
• Romans rename the region “Palestine” as an insult to the Jews.

7^th Century A.D.

• This is likely the start of tensions between Judaism and Islam.
• Arab conquests start the spread of Islam as they takeover various lands.
  • 622–632: Islamic world under Muhammad.
  • 632–661: The First 4 Caliphs add territory.
  • 661–750: Umayyad Caliphs add more territory.

• The Dome of the Rock is built in Jerusalem on the ruins of the second temple.
  • It’s an Islamic shrine built by the Umayyad caliph.
  • Today it’s the third holiest site in Islam behind Mecca and Medina.
  • Holiest site in Judaism.
  • It sits on an elevated plaza:
    • known to Muslims as “The Noble Sanctuary” (Al-Aqsa Mosque Compound), and 
    • to Jews as the Temple Mount (the site where the Temple of Jerusalem once stood).
  • According to Muslims, this is the spot from which the Prophet Muhammad was taken up into heaven for an encounter with God.
• Jerusalem becomes the holy city for three monotheistic religions.
  • Judaism, 
  • Christianity,
  • Islam.

 11^th Century A.D.

• Intense persecution of Jews in Jerusalem by the Seljuk Turks.
• Christians in Europe have several crusades against the Islamic world to attempt to bring Jerusalem back under the control of Christians.
• Many Jews were killed during this time.

1291 A.D.

• Crusaders defeated and the Mamluks takeover the region.
  • They are non-Arab, (mostly Turkic, Caucasian, Eastern and Southeastern European) enslaved mercenaries, slave-soldiers, and freed slaves who serve the Arab and Ottoman dynasties.
  • They rule for several hundred years.

1517-1917 A.D.

• The Holy Land and much of the Middle East is conquered by the Ottoman Empire, an Islamic superpower.
• The land of Israel was unofficially called Palestine, a geographical term describing the land south of Syria.
• Jews are not permitted to buy land.
• Zionism formed in Europe. It’s an attempt to build a Jewish national state in their ancient homeland.
• Jews begin moving from Europe back to the region of their ancient homeland..
• The Ottomans had ruled for almost 400 years.
• Britain declares war on Ottoman Empire. 

Israel and Palestine under British rule.

1917 A.D.

• The Balfour Declaration, issued by the British Government during World War I, announces its support for the establishment of a “national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine.
• At the start of WWI, this is an Ottoman region with a small minority Jewish population.

1918 – 1922 A.D.

• World War I.
  • The collapse of the Ottoman Empire.
  • The League of Nations permits the British and French to carve up land in the Middle East.
  • The British Mandate for Palestine was created at the end of the war.
  • British are to administer the territories of Palestine and Transjordan (Jordan).
  • The Mandate’s territory is called “Palestine”, in accordance with local Palestinian Arab and Ottoman usage and with European tradition.
  • The Mandate stipulated there three official languages: English, Arabic and Hebrew.

• In September 1922, the League of Nations and Great Britain changed the mandate and decided that the Jewish national homeland would not apply to the area east of the Jordan River.
• The British give more independence to Iraq and Jordan.

1939 A.D.

• The British limit Jewish immigration to “Palestine” to 75,000 per year.

1937-1945 A.D.

• Holocaust.
  • Many Jews flee from Europe to Palestine.
  • Six million Jews were murdered by the Nazis’.
  • Conflicts between Jews and Arabs increase.
  • Britain begins to withdraw from the region.

Birth of the Israel State.

1947 A.D.

• The U.N. proposes a plan to partition Palestine into two independent states.
  • Jewish state.
  • Arab state.
  • Jerusalem to become an international zone.
  • Israel accepts. “We will take whatever you give us.”
  • Arabs reject and regularly attack Jewish settlements.

1948 A.D.

• May 14, 1948, the British Mandate ends.
• Britain completes withdrawal from Palestine.
• Jews declare themselves an independent state.
• They encourage the Arabs to stay.

1948 A.D.: First Arab-Israeli War.

• As soon as the British withdraw from the region, war breaks out with Israel and five Arab nations.
  • Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon—the Arab Leagues.
• Arabs invade the region, attempting to establish a unified Arab Palestine.

1949 A.D.

• After ten months a ceasefire is declared.
  • The State of Israel controlled the area that the UN had proposed for the Jewish state, and
  • almost 60% of the area proposed for the Arab state.
• As part of the ceasefire agreement:
  • Jerusalem is split.
    • Jordan claims East Jerusalem and the West Bank.
    • Israel claims West Jerusalem.
  • Egypt occupies the Gaza Strip.
• No Arab state was ever created under the British Mandate.

Palestine Liberation Organization.

1964 A.D.

• The Arab League, a regional organization of Arab states in the Middle East, initiated the formation of the PLO in 1964.
  • The founding member Arab states were:
    • Egypt
    • Syria
    • Lebanon
    • Iraq
    • Jordan
    • Saudi Arabia
    • Yemen.
    • Libya
    • Sudan
    • Tunisia
    • Morocco
    • Kuwait
    • Algeria
    • Bahrain
    • Oman
    • Qatar 
• The PLO is an extremist, terrorist organization that calls for the destruction of the state of Israel and ownership of the entire region.
• The PLO declares this Arab group “The Palestinian People.” 
• This is the first time they use the term Palestinians. Before that, they called themselves Arabs.
  • Palestinian people, also referred to as Palestinian Arabs, are descended from peoples who have inhabited the region of Palestine over the millennia, and who are culturally and linguistically Arab.

1967 A.D. – Six-Day War.

• Jordan, Syria, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt start the “Six-Day War.”
• Israel learns of the plan and strikes first. They take control of:
  • Golan Heights from Syria.
  • West Bank and East Jerusalem from Jordan.
  • Gaza Strip from Egypt.
  • Sinai Peninsula from Egypt (returned to Egypt in 1979).

• Arab League Summit held after the Six-Day War.
  • The Arab conclusion is:
    • No Peace with Israel.
    • No Recognition of Israel.
    • No Negotiation with Israel.
  • This is the main reason there has never been peace in the area.
• The summit included the “oil-rich Arab states” providing financial aid to the states who lost the war and to “help them rebuild their military forces.”
• The final communique of the summit “underscored the Palestinians’ right to regain the whole of Palestine—that is, to destroy the State of Israel.”
• After the war, most “Palestinians” do not return to their homes but settle in The Gaza Strip, the West Bank, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon.

1973 A.D.

• Yom Kippur War.
  • Between Israel and a coalition of Arab states led by Egypt and Syria. 
  • Most of the combat took place in the Sinai Peninsula and the Golan Heights.
  • Israel was caught off guard and the Arabs were very successful in early fighting.
  • Israel threatens Damascus and Cairo and a ceasefire is called.

1979 A.D.

• Camp David Accords.
• Palestinians did not participate.
• U.N. condemns the treaty.
• Israel returns the Sinai Desert to Egypt.

1987 A.D.

• First Intifada began in December 1987-September 1993.
  • An intifada is a rebellion, uprising, or resistance movement against oppression.
  • It starts in Jabalia refugee camp when an Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) truck and two civilian Arab vans collide.
  • Aimed at ending Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip and creating an independent Palestinian state.
  • Results in the 1993 Oslo Accords.

• President Bill Clinton oversees.
• A framework for peace negotiations between Israel and the PLO.
• A complete failure.
• PLO violence increases after the accord.

2000 A.D.

• Camp David Summit.
  • Israel makes major concessions.
  • Arafat flatly refuses and more violence begins.
• Second Intifada.
  • September 2000–late 2005.
  • Ariel Sharon, the future Prime Minister of Israel, visits the Temple Mount.
    • PLO finds that offensive.
    • They launch suicide bombings and numerous attacks against Israel.
  • Israel then withdraws from Gaza.
  • Hamas burns everything related to the Jews who lived in Gaza.
  • The two uprisings resulted in the deaths of more than 5,000 Palestinians and 1,400 Israelis. 

Hamas. 

2005 A.D.

• Two main Palestinian political parties are Fatah and Hamas.
• Hamas was founded in 1987 as a Sunni-Islamist militant group aiming to destroy the State of Israel and create an Islamic state.
  • Sunni Islam is the largest branch of Islam (85–90% of Muslims).
    • Its name refers to the tradition of Muhammad.
  • Shia Muslims are the other branch.
• Fatah, formerly called the Palestinian National Liberation Movement, is a Palestinian nationalist and social democratic political party.

• It is the largest faction of the multi-party PLO.
• The Palestinian Authority is the Fatah-controlled government body that exercises partial control over the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.
• Since January 2013, the Palestinian Authority has used the name “State of Palestine” on official documents.
• The United Nations recognizes the PLO as the “representative of the Palestinian people.”
• The citizens of Gaza elect Hamas and they win the election in 2006 and assume control.
• Hamas-Fatah split in 2007 but reconcile in 2017.

October 7, 2023 A.D.

• Hamas and several other Palestinian militant groups launched coordinated armed incursions from the Gaza Strip into the Gaza envelope of southern Israel.
• The attacks began with a barrage of at least 3,000 rockets launched against Israel and vehicle-transported and powered paraglider incursions into Israel.
• Hamas fighters breached the Gaza-Israel barrier, attacking military bases and massacring civilians in Gaza-enveloped Kibbutz settlements, including at the Nova music festival.
• The attackers killed 1,139 Jews.
• Hamas said its attack was in response to:
  • the continued Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories,
  • the blockade of the Gaza Strip,
  • the expansion of illegal Israeli settlements,
  • rising Israeli settler violence.

OK, we are up to date. But where does this leave us? Perhaps it depends on your political or religious views. Maybe your opinions are based on humanitarian issues. Here are some of my takeaways.

• Islam and Judaism share a common origin through Abraham.
  • Ishmael, Abraham’s first son, is considered by Muslims to be the Father of the Arabs. 
  • Abraham’s second son Isaac is called Father of the Hebrews. 
  • For Muslims, Abraham is an important prophet of Islam and the ancestor of Muhammad through Ishmael. 
• The relationship between Jews and Arabs starts to come apart in the seventh-century and Islam’s earliest days.
  • At that time, Jewish tribes rejected the Prophet Muhammad’s claims to religious and political leadership. 
  • As Arabs conquered lands in their expansion from Mecca, in Saudi Arabia, to the whole Middle East and the Mediterranean countries in Northern Africa, a doctrine was developed whose basic tenet was, and still is: lands conquered by Muslims belong to the Islamic Community and cannot be surrendered. Never. 
• In the modern era, the Zionist movement and establishment of the State of Israel have exacerbated this tension.
• There has never been an autonomous Arab state, Muslim state, or any state other than Israel in the area called Palestine. 
• There is no Palestinian State today.
• There are numerous occasions when Israel attempted to make peace with those living in the region but has been rejected every time. (See Below.)
• The only goal the “Palestinians” have is the destruction of Israel.
• President Joe Biden made the following statement:
• “Let us get something straight here. Until the region says unequivocally that they acknowledge the right of Israel to exist as an independent Jewish state, there will be no peace”.

The Palestinians have rejected all of Israel’s peace proposals. Do they want peace? No, clearly they do not. Personally I think if Israel finishes its war with Hamas and successfully removes it from power in Gaza, another terrorist organization, whose goal is the eradication of the Jews, will take the place of Hamas.

I don’t see this fighting ever ending and I fully support Israels war with Hamas and its complete destruction.

Palestinian Peace Proposal Rejections.

• The Mufti, Hajj Amin Husseini.
  • The Mufti leads the Palestinian Arabs from the early 1920s to the late 1940s,
  • Meets with Hitler during WW2 to encourage Germany to implement a Final Solution to exterminate the Jews.
  • He completely rejected the idea of a Jewish state and promised that if such a state were established, every last Jew would be expelled from a Palestinian Arab state.
• The UN partition plan
  • In November 1947, the same Mufti refused to adopt the UN partition plan that offered to establish two states, one Jewish and the other Arab.
  • He rejected a two-state solution until the day he died.

• Yasser Arafat.
  • He is the successor to the Mufti.
  • Arafat, continued to reject any legitimacy for the State of Israel and refused to even acknowledge its existence.
  • He threw the PLO’s support behind Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait in 1991.
  • When Anwar Sadat signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1979, Arafat’s PLO called for Egypt to be boycotted.
  • The Arab states adopted that boycott and prevented Cairo from participating in the Arab League from 1977 until 1989.
• The Oslo “Peace Process”.
  • The Palestinians responded to Israel’s attempts to implement the Oslo Accords by sending waves of suicide bombers to the streets and buses of the cities of Israel.
  • At the July 2000 Camp David summit, Israel PM Ehud Barak offered Arafat a series of far-reaching concessions as part of a comprehensive peace arrangement.
  • The PLO rejected the Israeli proposals and never offered a counterproposal. 
  • Instead, the PLO-dominated Palestinian Authority (PA) initiated a massive, premeditated wave of violence.
  • Arafat’s war of terror (the so-called “al-Aqsa Intifada”) was unparalleled in the scale and relentlessness of its terrorist attacks on Israeli civilians. A total of 1,184 Israelis were murdered.
• Disengagement.
  • August 2005.
  • The government of Israel carried out the unilateral evacuation of all Israeli villages from the Gaza Strip and the northern West Bank.
  • In response, the Palestinians have been launching missiles and rockets on Israeli towns and villages from the Gaza Strip for years, some of which reach as far as Tel Aviv.
  • The number of rockets, missiles, and mortar shells fired into Israel from Gaza since 2007 is in the tens of thousand

• Mahmoud Abbas.
  • In 2008, Israeli PM Ehud Olmert offered Arafat’s successor, President Mahmoud Abbas, a sweeping peace proposal.
  • Abbas rejected it outright.
  • He claimed that “the gaps are too wide,” meaning there was too great a distance between what the Palestinians demanded and what the Israelis were offering.
  • “I will wait until all the Israeli settlements have been frozen,” he said.
  • According to Saeb Erekat, chief negotiator for the Palestinians, “We are not in a market or a bazaar. I came here to determine the boundaries of Palestine from 1967 without budging an inch, without removing one stone from Jerusalem or any of the holy places to Islam or Christianity in Jerusalem.”
  • The Palestinians refused Olmert’s offer because they found his unprecedented territorial concessions insufficient and because they insisted on the right to manage the holy sites in Jerusalem in place of the Jordanians.

• Deal of the Century.
  • The Palestinian leadership rejected the US proposal before they had seen it.
  • They also refused to participate in the economic conference held in Bahrain at the end of June 2019 and prevented other Palestinians from participating.
  • As soon as the plan was published, it was a given that Abbas would oppose it strongly.
    • “We say a thousand times. No, no, no to the Deal of the Century,” he said.
    • “We refused this deal from the beginning, and we were right.
    • Two days ago, they said to listen. Listen to what? Shall we get a country without Jerusalem for every Palestinian, Muslim, or Christian child?” he asked.
  • Mahmoud Abbas is now calling the deal a conspiracy that “will never pass.