Detta skolarbete är en uppsats om Israel-Palestina-konflikten (the Israel-Palestine conflict). Uppsatsen gjordes i ämnet engelska.
Skriven av: Emma Wikström.
Årskurs: 9.
Israel-Palestine Conflict
The 14th of May 1948 Israel was established. Although, long before this it had been a growing unrest in the area of Palestine between Jews and Arabs; however, it was not before Israel’s establishment the larger conflicts began and the disturbances have not ended yet.
Background
Many different ethnic groups with different religions and cultures have lived and ruled over the small area of Palestine over the years, among those are Philistines, Jews, Greeks, Romans, Muslims, Arabs and Christians. Palestine is also sacred land in all of the Abrahamic religions, Judaism, Christianity and Islam which has made the conflict even more complicated and both Jews and Muslims consider themselves rightful to the land because of their religions. In 60 A.D. the Jewish people began to revolt against the Romans which led to a diaspora of the Jews and most of the Jews fled to Europe. Later on the Roman Empire fell and even later the Ottoman Empire took control of Palestine. The Ottoman Empire had the land for a couple of hundred years until the end of the First World War when the British occupied Palestine in 1917. Before this during the 19th century nationalism had grown strong in Europe which led to a Jewish nationalism called Zionism. The Zionistic idea was that the Jews should return to their country and once again build a Jewish state. Moreover, pogroms had begun in the late 19th century which led to an even greater desire to move back to Palestine. As a result of the pogroms and the Zionistic ideas, the immigration of Jews to Palestine increased dramatically. Furthermore, the British had a constructive attitude to the idea of that the Jewish people should have a state of their own in Palestine, as along as the Arabian people was not wronged, which made the immigration of the Jews possible. However, the great immigration of Jews displeased the Palestinians and conflicts arose. Moreover, when Hitler came to power in Germany even more Jews immigrated and after the Second World War the situation had become extreme with terror attacks from both sides.
Israel’s establishment and war
In 1947, the British gave the issue to the United Nations and they recommended the adoption of the partition plan of Palestine and on the 14th of May 1948 Israel was established. The partition plan wanted to partition Palestine into a Jewish state and an Arabic state and that these two would have an economic union. The plan was accepted by the Jewish agency, but rejected by Arab governments. Therefore, the same day as the establishment of Israel, Egypt, Syria, Jordan and Iraq attacked the new state with aircraft and declared war on Israel and therefore the partition plan was not implemented. Although, other countries e.g. the United States, Soviet, France and the United Kingdom acknowledged the new country rather soon after the establishment. In addition, the Israeli forces were successful of defending their grounds and a year later when a truce was called Israel had occupied all of the land the Palestinians had been promised according to the partition plan one year earlier. During this first war, about 800 000 Palestinians moved to their Arabic neighboring countries and to refugee camps organized by the United Nations, furthermore, nowadays the refugee camps have become permanent homes to about one million Palestinians. After the first war three big wars were to come, first there was the Suez Crisis in 1956, the second was the Six Day War in 1967 and the third one was the Yom Kippur War in 1973. Furthermore, in the meantime there were continuous other conflicts.
Peace Process
When the Egyptian president Nasser passed away he was succeeded by Anwar Sadat. Sadat wanted to negotiate and make peace between Egypt and Israel. The reaction of this was intense in the Arab world and many threatened to kill Sadat. 16 months later the president of the United States Jimmy Carter invited the prime minister of Israel Yitzhak Rabin and Sadat to his summer residence Camp David in Mars 1979 and the two leaders of Egypt and Israel signed a peace treaty. This resulted in that Egypt got back the Sinai Peninsula and that Sadat was assassinated in 1983 by Islamist extremists. The next notable peace treaty after the Camp David one was the Oslo Accords in 1993 between Israel and PLO, Palestine Liberation Organization, which represented the Palestinians. PLO was founded in the 1960 and was a Palestinian liberation organization; however, they did not succeed in getting international recognition because of their ambition of annihilating Israel. Although, in 1993 after many conflicts and wars between PLO and Israel, PLO’s leader Yasser Arafat and the prime minister of Israel Rabin met during a secret meeting in Oslo. There, Israel recognized PLO as the representative of the Palestinians and PLO recognized Israel’s right to exist. In addition, they signed a peace treaty and it was also decided that the Palestinians would get self-government in the West bank and the Gaza Strip during a transitional period. Also this treaty led to an assassination and this time it was Yitzhak Rabin who got killed by a Jewish extremist. These kinds of extremists from both side hampered the peace process. In 2004 Yasser Arafat died and his successor Mahmoud Abbas did not believe the Jews could be defeated with violence and promised to put an end to the corruptions. However, in 2006 in the Palestinian parliamentary election PLO lost and a new organisation called Hamas won. Hamas opposes to every agreement with Israel and do not recognize Israel’s right to exist. Moreover, because of several attacks on Israel and the Israeli people from Hamas’s side the United Nations has declared the organization as a terror organization. The conflicts between the Jews and the Palestinians are not thus far solved.
Source list:
Books:
Bonnier Utbildning AB; Historia Direkt
Malmö, Sweden, 2005
Gleerups Utbildning AB; Alla Tiders Historia Max
Viborg, Denmark, 2007
Pointing, Clive; World History A New Perspective
London, Great Britain, 2001
Internet:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestine
Palestine, Wikipedia, last modified in September 2013, page accessed 16 September, 2013
http://www.ne.se/lang/israel-palestina-fr%C3%A5gan
Israel-Palestine Conflict, NE, last modified in September 2013, page accessed 16 September, 2013