The Palestinian - Israeli Conflict

The Palestinian-Israeli Conflict

A front page article written by Edward Sanders in the September 27, 2010 edition of the Los Angeles Times, appearing under the title “West Bank Freeze Expires,” announced the latest event in what has been one of the oldest conflicts in history. This conflict is the conflict between Palestinians and Jews over the land known as Palestine. The Sanders reported that a ten-month moratorium on the construction of new homes by Jewish settlers in the West Bank area of Palestine was about to expire. During the moratorium, Jewish settlers had been prevented from building any new houses in the West Bank area because leaders of Israel and Palestinian groups had hoped that it would help them negotiate a new peace agreement between Israel and Palestinian groups. According to the article, the moratorium was about to expire without any significant progress on a peace agreement (Sanders). Sanders reported, “The fight over West Bank settlements has long been a key sticking point in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict though it has never brought the peace process to the brink of a standstill” (AA4). Both sides blamed each other for not making any progress. Once again, one of the oldest conflicts in the world appeared to be no closer to a solution. As one writer says, “The Palestine-Israel conflict is a permanent fixture in news media the world over.” (Ferry and Harms, The Palestine-Israel Conflict: A Basic Introduction. 2008, p. xiii). Will that conflict always be a permanent fixture in our news, or is a solution to that conflict impossible. Nothing is impossible, even an Israeli-Palestinian peace. However, before Israelis and the Palestinians can ever hope to reach a peace, both parties will have to recognize the right of the other to exist as a nation. For the reasons explained below, the possibility of either party recognizing the other’s right to exist does not appear likely any time soon and may never happen.

Palestine is the name of a small region located at the eastern end of the Mediterranean Sea. It is not a nation, but a region that that lies within the boundaries of several nations today. According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, most of the region of Palestine lies within the boundaries of the State of Israel today, but some parts of the region lie within the nations of Jordan and Egypt as well (Palestine 407). Palestine is now generally defined as that region that is bounded on the east by the Jordan River, on the north by the border between Israel and Lebanon, on the west by the Mediterranean Sea, and on the south by the Negev Desert (Palestine 407). Palestine is a relatively small region, measuring roughly 200 miles north to south, and about 50 miles east to west (World Desk Reference, page 317). That is about the same land area as Southern California from Santa Barbara in the north to San Diego in the south.

Why has such a small region of the world generated so much controversy in the past and now? First, the region has had strategic importance for centuries because the main roads between Egypt and Syria and between the Mediterranean and the hills beyond the Jordan River pass through it (Palestine, p. 407). But more importantly, the region has also been held sacred by Jews, Christians and Muslims for centuries and is often referred to as the Holy Land (Palestine, 407). According to the Old Testament Book of Genesis chapters 12, Abraham was told by God to leave Ur in Mesopotamia and move his family to the land of Canaan which was the ancient name for the land of Palestine (Genesis, Chapter 12). According to the Book of Genesis, this land of Canaan was the land God promised to Abraham. The descendants of Abraham have lived in the land of Palestine ever since. Some of those descendants, the children of Abraham’s grandson Jacob moved to Egypt where they lived for more than 400 years before returning to Palestine in about the year 1250 BC (Zondervan, p ). Those children of Abraham were known as the Israelites. According to the Biblical book of Joshua, the children of Israel were able to conquer much of the land of Palestine. Later, the Israelites would lose much of that land either to local Canaanite tribes such as the Philistines or through defeat by neighboring empires such as the Assyrians, Babylonians, and Romans. Even though the Israelites, later to be known as the Jews, lost much of their control over Palestine or moved away from Palestine for various reasons, they still regarded Palestine as the land that God had promised to them through Abraham.

Palestine came under the control of the Romans in about 63 BC and they controlled Palestine for much of the next six hundred years (Palestine, 414-415). The rise of Islam in the seventh century A.D. eventually led to Arab Muslims conquering Palestine in about 638 (Palestine, 416). For the next thirteen hundred years, Palestine