Palestinian state within 10 years. It also restricted Jewish immigration into Palestine and the Jewish ability to buy Arab land.
←19 | 20→
As the 1940s were nearing their end, the British, who had fulfilled their mission by enabling the creation of a “national home” for the Jewish people, could no longer manage the daily affairs of Palestine. They asked that what was entrusted to them by the League of Nations be turned over to its successor organization, the United Nations.
The UN acted with General Assembly Resolution 181(II) of November 29, 1947, which called for partitioning Palestine into an Arab state and a Jewish state, for an economic union between them, and for Jerusalem to be a corpus separatum—a separate entity under a special international regime. It passed with 33 votes in favor, 13 against, and ten abstentions. The Arabs rejected the resolution as the Palestinians among them constituted the great majority in Palestine (at least two-thirds of the population, with ownership of over 90% of the land) and did not want to witness their land and homes be taken away and given to the Jewish minority. Fighting erupted between Palestinian militias and Jewish forces.
As the British Mandate flag was lowered over Palestine, David Ben-Gurion—the Chair of the Jewish Agency for Palestine and the Executive Head of the World Zionist Organization— proclaimed the State of Israel on May 14, 1948. This pushed Arab forces from Egypt, Syria, Transjordan (later Jordan), Lebanon, and Iraq to invade. The ensuing war gave Israel the opportunity to acquire 78% of historic Palestine, 22% more than what was allocated to it under the Partition Resolution. The remaining territory ended up under Jordanian and Egyptian jurisdictions, with the former keeping East Jerusalem and the West Bank, and the latter retaining control of the Gaza Strip. During this time of conflict and war, more than 500 Palestinian villages were destroyed and 726,000 Palestinians fled because of fear or were ejected from their homes by the Jewish or Israeli forces and became dispossessed, with many ending up living in refugee camps in the West Bank, Gaza Strip, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria, or elsewhere. In December 1948, the UN General Assembly passed 194 (III), which resolved that “the refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbors should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date, and that compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return and for loss of or damage to property which, under principles of international law or in equity, should be made good by the Governments or authorities responsible” (UN General Assembly, 1948, para. 19).
The Arab states and Israel stood eyeball to eyeball. East Jerusalem and the West Bank ended up within Jordanian jurisdiction, and the Gaza Strip within Egyptian jurisdiction. Israel took the remainder of what was to become the ←20 | 21→Arab (Palestinian) state. Bombastic talk and misguided policies in adjacent Arab states and in Israel resulted in the June 1967 War. This war lasted only six days but it enabled Israel to quadruple its size by seizing East Jerusalem and the West Bank from Jordan, the Gaza Strip and the Sinai Peninsula from Egypt, and the Golan Heights from Syria. Five months later, the UN Security Council unanimously adopted Resolution 242. It emphasized “the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war and the need to work for a just and lasting peace in which every State in the area can live in security” (UN Security Council, 1967, para. 2).
Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands, specifically East Jerusalem, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip intensified Palestinian resistance by the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), which was established under Egypt’s auspices in 1964, and other Palestinian groupings, but a Jewish settlement program in the occupied areas as well. Extremism and injustice on both sides of the divide was not far behind. The First Intifada or popular uprising against the Israeli occupation (1987–1993) started in the Jabalia refugee camp in the Gaza Strip after an Israeli military truck collided with a civilian car, killing four Palestinians. While the intifada saw Palestinians engage in resistance and civil disobedience, it neither brought the Palestinians independence and statehood nor gave the Israelis the security they sought. However, it opened the door to a series of diplomatic moves in the form of the Madrid Conference of 1991, the Oslo Accords of 1993, the Israel-Jordan Peace Treaty of 1994, the Oslo II Accords of 1995 between Israel and the PLO that gave the Palestinians control over parts of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, the Wye River Memorandum of 1998 that facilitated the withdrawal of Israeli forces from portion of the West Bank, the Sharm a-Sheikh Agreement of 1999 that established a timetable for permanent peace settlement between Israel and Palestine, the historic Camp David II Summit of 2000 that almost resolved the conflict, and Taba negotiations of 2001 when Israelis and Palestinians discussed Palestinian refugees, borders, security, and the future of Jerusalem. The positive effects of these peace moves were brief as Israel continued to consolidate its control of Palestinian areas by building more settlements and hardening its security measures and as the Palestinian Authority was hesitant to face its internal challenges, including the radicalization of some Palestinian factions, e.g., Hamas and Islamic Jihad. In the words of Guy Ben-Porat (2006),
Israel was concerned with the Palestinian Authority’s lack of commitment to combat fundamentalist terrorism and the continuation of inflammatory anti-Israeli propaganda in the Palestinian media and schools. Palestinians were frustrated by Israeli ←21 | 22→military checkpoints across the West Bank and Gaza and perceived the continuation of building in the settlements as an Israeli attempt to determine unilaterally the borders of the final agreement. (pp. 192–193)
The Second Intifada, the al-Aqsa Intifada (2000–2005), broke out, putting Palestinian communities under further Israeli siege. In 2002, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon approved the construction of a physical barrier that would separate Israel from the West Bank. For Sharon, it was impossible for Israel to annex the entirety of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip while simultaneously remaining a Jewish State. This security barrier, called the separation or apartheid wall by the Palestinians, divides their communities and blocks their travel routes. Around 95% of it is built from electronic fences, patrol roads, and observation towers. The other 5% of the wall is 8-meter-high concrete.
With international attention on the issue came proposed solutions. In June 2002, President George W. Bush called for an independent Palestinian state living peacefully alongside Israel. His speech became the basis of the Roadmap for Peace a year later, which consisted of ending the violence, halting settlement activity, reforming Palestinian institutions, accepting Israel’s right to exist, establishing a viable, sovereign Palestinian state, and reaching agreement on all contending issues by 2005 (U.S. Department of State, 2003). This was intended to be supervised by a joint committee that included the U.S., Russia, the European Union, and the UN.
Talks of peace resumed but were soon halted by an increase in violence. There was a realization that Israel could not remain a Jewish state while continuing its occupation. In 2004, Sharon decided to evacuate the Gaza Strip. Although Israel claimed that its unilateral withdrawal made it unoccupied territory, the occupation still remains as Israel exercises effective control over the region. Disagreements within Israel about the unsuitability of the Likud Party to run the country and about the future of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank caused Sharon to leave Likud in 2005 and form the Kadima Party. Following a stroke in early January 2006, Sharon was replaced by Ehud Olmert. That same month, Hamas won the Palestinian parliamentary election, thus beating the governing Fatah and causing a crisis that led Hamas to take over Gaza.
The Annapolis Peace Conference in 2007, which brought together Israeli Prime Minister Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, resulted in an agreement that followed the roadmap to a permanent two-state solution, but it was not long that both sides reached a dead end instead. ←22 | 23→As tensions increased between Hamas and Israel at the end of 2008, Israel launched “Operation Cast Lead” into Gaza and occupied parts of it for one year. Soon thereafter, an Israeli election brought back the right-leaning Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to power. He conditionally endorsed the creation of a Palestinian state but did little to nothing to advance it. For its part, the Palestinian Authority announced its intention to create a Palestinian state within two years. In 2011, Abbas petitioned the UN for the acceptance of Palestine as a member, but it was voted in as an observer
