Introduction
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the world’s oldest and most dealt with conflict ever to be seen. However, with the world’s best minds, this conflict remains a challenge with mediators after mediators fail to come up with a concrete solution to it. History has proven us wrong to treat this as an economic conflict with each sign pointing towards it being a religious conflict. I’m convinced that this is war is concealed with the nations’ names rather than being called a Christian-Islamic war, which is what it is. This paper explores the origins of this war, the futile attempts made at solving it and offers a proposal on how to solve the conflict (Gelvin 36).
Conflict genesis
Large numbers of Jews moved back to the middle east in the 1940s after the holocaust. They decided to return and establish the Jewish state which they claim was in existence from time immemorial. It, however, came under the Roman Empire (Gelvin 60). At that time the Romans crushed a resistance destroying the Judaic temple, some parts of which still stand to this date in Jerusalem, thereby scattering the Jews. Upon their migration back, the land was bought by the Jew’s national fund which held the land in trust for the Jewish people. This triggered an alert by the Palestinians who started resisting to sell off their land.
In the 1930s the Arab population revolted and was quashed by the British, who colonized that region. The British left in 1948 and soon the Jews declared independence and named themselves the state of Israel. The Palestinians eager to establish their own nation went into a war with Israel that included other nations like Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and Iraq. The inclusion of these nations into the war gave birth to the Israeli-Arab conflict. The Arabs lost the war prompting the Palestinians to flee and go into the Arab states as refugees. The new Israeli state did not include the West Bank and the Gaza strip (Gelvin 100).
Religious belief
The Jews believe that the land of Palestine was promised to them by God. While the Palestinians believe that with their mosques Aqsa and Haram, they are the rightful owners of that land. There have risen many leaders from Palestine with the latest one a Fatah leader in the Jewish prison calling for an alternative engagement with the Israeli. Fatah was the first group to launch attacks using the west bank and Gaza into Israel. Marwan Barghouti is of the opinion that a violent conflict solves nothing. He would like to play a moral war with Israel with a proposal on the creation of two states in the region. He Marwan suggests that the Palestinians get back 95 percent of West Bank through peaceful means. This is because making the Israeli strategically insecure while giving them moral security has worked against the Palestinians (Ayalon, Petrushka, and Sher 21).
Arab Awakening
The Arab Awakening is realigning the conflict neutralizers while replacing them with Islamists, who may have a different approach to the conflict. If the conflict was to be treated economically, then West Bank and Gaza could have been modeled after Singapore (Bronner 1). This would have given the push by Palestine to have a state of their own some much-needed backbone that shows they can exist alongside Israel in harmony.
The Jews upon being surveyed were in the favor of a two-state existence, although the Israeli government was opposed to such a move by the Palestinians. The reason was that their withdrawal from Gaza in 2005 gave Islamists a launchpad from where to send missiles into Israel. As Israel continues to advance in technology, it has developed a defense system against the missiles. With this Ami Ayalon suggests that the Israeli government move to create a two-state nation prior to a peace agreement.
Of more importance to the Palestinians is an Israeli apology for the 1948 incident. The Israelis, on the other hand, would want to be fully recognized by the Palestinians and repeal the Arab anti-Semitism. The anti-Zionists movement is what has characterized the conflicts with Iran and the Arab world in general. Israel has been involved in frustrating the Iranian nuclear weapons’ acquisitions by eliminating the Iranian scientists as claimed by the latter. Israel’s prime minister Mr. Netanyahu is worried about the race to acquire nuclear weapons by an enemy state. The United States due to its military might is, however, not moving fast to stop the threat (Friedman 21).
Proposal
I suggest the need to start a dialogue that will lead the two conflicting sides towards apologizing to each other unconditionally. The Palestinians and the Arab world need to face the fact that Israel is here and is part of the world society. They need to recognize Israel, while the latter needs to apologize for any atrocities caused upon the Arabs who inhabited Palestine in 1948. From there the world needs to help convert the West Bank and Gaza into economic models with both the Christians and Muslims living together. Without apologies, the first step towards a peaceful coexistence will remain an elusive dream.
Works Cited
Ayalon, Ami, Orni Petruschka and Gilead Sher. “Peace without partners.”New York Times. 2012: A 23. Print.
Bronner, Ethan. “Israel says Iran Is Behind Bombs.” New York Times. 2012: A 1. Print.
Friedman, Thomas. “A Middle East Twofer.” New York Times. 2012: A 21. Print.
Gelvin, James L. The Israel-Palestine Conflict: One Hundred Years of War. Cambridge [u.a.: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2007. Print.