Belnin, Joel, and Lisa Hajjar. "Palestine, Israel, and the Arab-Isreali Conflict: A Primer". Middle East Report (2014): 1-16.

Belnin, Joel, and Lisa Hajjar. "Palestine, Israel, and the Arab-Isreali Conflict: A Primer". Middle East Report (2014): 1-16.

• The conflict between Jews and Palestinian Arabs only began around the turn of the 20th Century (1).
• For the Jews, the nationalist movements of the 19th Century manifested as Zionism, the idea of ending the Jewish diaspora by creating a Jewish homeland. The focus for the Zionist movement was Palestine, as the birthplace of the Jewish people, and major Jewish immigration into Palestine began in 1882 (1).
• The essence of Zionism is a belief that the Jews constitute a nation and that the only solution to anti-Semitism is to concentrate as many Jews as possible in Israel to form their own state. These aims were articulated by Theodor Herzl, the founder of the World Zionist Organization, in 1897 (2).
• There are many different forms of Zionism. The most popular from the 1920s until the 1970s was Labor Zionism, which sought to link socialism and Zionist nationalism, as expressed through the kibbutz movement and the formation of Jewish trade unions and cooperatives. Labor Zionist militias, like Haganah and Palmach, that were crucial in the formation of Israel, and took political form in the Israeli Labor Party in 1968, whose leader, David Ben-Gurion, became Israel's first prime minister (2).
• Revisionist Zionism, led by Vladimir Jabotinsky, differed in that it stressed the need to establish a state by military force and called for the expansion of this state east of the Jordan River. They operated the Betar and ETZEL militias, which became the core of the Herut party after the foundation of Israel. By the 1970s, this movement had been absorbed into Likud (2).
• Initially, most Jews opposed Zionism, and Orthodox Jews were actively opposed as they believed it constituted wrongful interference in God's plan. Other Jews, especially in the USA, believed that Zionism might undermine their rights in their countries of residence (2-3). International support was raised by the pogroms carried out against Jews in the Russian Empire and became overwhelming after the Holocaust (2). 
• Orthodox Jews continued to oppose Zionism for decades after the creation of Israel, although they still encouraged immigration as a way of strengthening the Jewish community there. After the 1967 War, many Orthodox Jews interpreted Israeli victory as a sign of divine favor, especially since it had resulted in Israeli control of many important religious sites in the West Bank, and switched to supporting Israel. This switch led to the rise of new religious parties in Israeli politics, particularly ones focused on permanent Israeli control and Jewish settlement of the West Bank (3).
• The first large clashes between Jews and Palestinian Arabs occurred in 1920 and 1921, killing roughly equal numbers of both groups. Tensions were exacerbated throughout the 1920s by Jewish National Fund's strategy of buying up land in Palestine from absentee landlords and then evicting the Arab tenant famers (4).
• In 1928, tensions over the religious sites in Jerusalem broke out between Jews and Arabs. This sparked violence on 15 August 1929, when Betar members raised a Zionist flag over the Wailing Wall. Responding to rumors that the Al Aqsa Mosque was going to be attacked, Muslims attacked Jews, leading to a week of communal violence killing 133 Jews and 115 Arabs and the flight of the Jewish community in Hebron (4).
• Jewish immigration to Palestine greatly increased after Adolf Hitler's ascendance to power in 1933, leading to renewed clashes that culminated in the Arab Revolt of 1936-1939, during which Palestinians fighting against Jewish encroachment and British favoritism of the Jews were crushed by British forces supported by Jewish paramilitaries and surrounding Arab powers. Following the Arab Revolt, Britain focused more heavily on trying to keep the peace in Palestine, limiting Jewish immigration and land purchases in 1939 (4).
• After WW2, escalating tensions between Jews and Palestinians and clashes between British forces and Zionist militias led Britain to relinquish its mandate over the territory to the UN. The UN then set up a committee that decided on 29 November 1946 to partition Palestine between the Arabs and the Jews (4)
• In 1946, there were 608,000 Jews in Palestine, owning around 20% of the arable land, and 1.269 million Palestinians, owning the remaining 80%. The UN plan would divide the territory so that each group was a majority in its own country, with the Israeli state being slightly larger territorially on the assumption of future Jewish immigration, and the area around Jerusalem and Bethlehem to become international zones (4).
• The Jews accepted the UN partition plan, but the Palestinians rejected it, as did all surrounding Arab states. Some Arabs opposed the plan because it gave too much land to the Jews, and others because they considered Israel to be a settler colony only in existence because the British colonial government had permitted Jewish immigration against the wishes of the majority of the native population (5).
• Fighting between Arabs and Jews began within days of the UN partition plan being accepted. The much better organized, trained, and armed Zionist militias managed to defeat Palestinian militias and secured control of most of the territory allotted to them in the partition plan by Spring 1948 (5).
• Egypt, Syria, Jordan, and Iraq became involved in the conflict in 1948, responding to the evacuation of the British administration and the declaration of an independent Israel on 15 May 1948. Israel gained the upper hand over the combined Arab forces due to weapon shipments from Czechoslovakia in June 1948 and seized territory beyond the borders of the initial partition plan. When an armistice was signed in 1949, Israel controlled 77% of the territory of Mandate Palestine, Jordan occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank, and Egypt occupied the Gaza Strip (5).
• Although they claimed to be fighting on behalf of the Palestinians, none of the Arab states were actually interested in supporting Palestinian statehood. Instead they wanted to annex Palestinian territory into their own states (5).
• Even after the 1949 armistice, there was still an active arms race between Israel and the Arab states (6).
• In 1956, Israel attacked Egypt alongside Britain and France to reverse the nationalization of the Suez Canal. Israeli forces captured Gaza and the Sinai Peninsula, but were forced to withdrawal in response to American and Soviet pressure to stop the conflict (6).
• In Spring 1967, Soviet advisors falsely informed the Syrian government that Israeli forces were massing to invade Syria. At the time this was believable due to escalating violence in northern Israel and Israeli threats to attack if it did not stop Palestinian militias from using its territory to attack Israel (6).
• Egypt responded to the threat of war by reoccupying the Sinai Peninsula and ordering UN peacekeepers to leave the region. After reoccupying Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt blockaded the Gulf of Aqaba, terrifying the Israeli public (6-7).
• Israel responded to the blockade of the Gulf of Aqaba by preemptively attacking Egypt and Syria on 5 June 1967. Israeli forces managed to destroy nearly the entire Egyptian and Syrian air forces within hours, and then managed to route the Egyptian, Syrian, and, later, Jordanian armies in 6 days of fighting. By the end of the war, Israel controlled the West Bank, Jerusalem, Gaza, Sinai, and the Golan Heights (7).
• The Israeli occupation of the West Bank, Jerusalem, Gaza, Sinai, and Golan led to the passage of UN Resolution 242, which insisted that Israel withdraw from these territories. The Israel insist that Resolution 242 only demands limited retreat and that they do not have to evacuate all the territories. For their part, the Palestinians reject Resolution 242 because it makes no mention of a Palestinian state (8).
• In the aftermath of the Six Day War, Israel was established as the predominant military force in the Middle East and the Arab states were utterly humiliated. The utter weakness of the Arab states led the Palestinians to take up the fight themselves and the Palestinian Liberation Organization and other groups emerged as major players only after 1967 (7).
• After his initial attempt to negotiate peace with Israel in exchange for the return of Sinai was rebuffed by Israel and the USA, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat organized with Syria to attack Sinai and Golan simultaneously on Yom Kippur in October 1973. Egyptian and Syrian forces initially caught Israel off guard, but were defeated after America supplied Israel with military aid (8).
• After the Yom Kippur War, US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger tried to negotiate limited Israeli withdrawals from Sinai and Golan while avoiding discussion of controversial issues like Jerusalem or Gaza, but by 1975 these efforts had failed (8). The peace process was only restarted by a surprise visit to Jerusalem by President Sadat on 19 November 1977 (9).
• In September 1978, US President Jimmy Carter invited President Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Began to Camp David to attempt to negotiate a peace treaty. The Camp David Accords ended war between Egypt and Israel and included an agreement to grant autonomy to Gaza and the West Bank within 5 years, but this part on the Palestinians would never implemented (9).
• The part of the Camp David Accords dealing with the Palestinians failed both because Israel continued to confiscate land and build settlements, in violation of the terms of the Accord, and because the Palestinians themselves never accepted the basis of any period of Israel rule or occupation of the territories, neither did any Arab state except Egypt (9).
• When Jewish immigration into Palestine began in earnest in the late 1800s, the region known as Palestine was under Ottoman rule and divided between the Province of Beirut, containing Acre and Nablus, and the District of Jerusalem, which was under the direct control of Istanbul due to its religious significance (1-2).
• In 1878, all three districts had a combined population of 403,795 Muslims and Druze, 43,659 Christians, and 15,011 Jews. There were also over 10,000 Jewish immigrants of foreign citizenship and several thousand Bedouin Arabs not officially counted as Ottoman subjects. By 1914, the number of Jewish settlers had increased to 60,000 compared to an Arab population of 683,000. Nablus and Acre were the most important Arab cities, although the vast majority of Muslim and Christian Arabs lived in rural villages. Most Palestinian Jews were concentrated in the urban centers of Jerusalem, Hebron, Safad, and Tiberias; they were generally orthodox, conservative, and unsupportive of the Zionist movement (2).
• The territory claimed by both group was, until 1948, known as Palestine. After the 1948-1949 war, that land was divided into three parts: Israel, the Gaza Strip, and the West Bank. All these areas are claimed by both Jews and Palestinian Arabs. The total area is roughly 10,000 square miles (1).
• Jewish claims to the land are based on the need for a Jewish homeland after the Holocaust and religious justifications that that land was proposed to the descents of Abraham, the Jews, in the Torah. Palestinians, who include Muslims, Christians, and Druze, reject both of these arguments and claim position of the land as the demographic majority and on the basis of hundreds of years of continuous habitation (1). 
• The Israeli Labor Party governed the country from its foundation until 1977, when they lost the elections to Likud. Since that point, Labor or Likud, the later often joining with right-wing religious and nationalist parties, have been in government or formed a coalition between themselves (3).
• Likud and its right-wing allies take a hard line of the issue of Arab-Israeli relations and opposed any withdrawal from the occupied territories. The Labor Party still supports Jewish settlement in the West Bank, but is willing to compromise on some territorial issues in negotiations with the Arabs (3).
• There are also political parties to the left of the Labor Party. Leftist Zionists, organized into Meretz in the 1980s, usually support Labor and are more willing to consider territorial concessions or Palestinian statehood. Even farther to the left are anti-Zionist Israelis who either advocate for a single state with equal rights or the creation of an independent Palestine in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank (3).
• During World War One, the British High Commissioner in Egypt, Sir Henry McMahon, secretly contacted Husayn Ibn Ali, Ottoman governor of Mecca and Medina and head of the Hashemite family, and convinced him to led an Arab revolt against the Ottomans with the promise that Britain would support the establishment of an Arab state under his family's control in the former Arab territories of the Ottoman Empire (3).
• Husayn Ibn Ali's revolt was successful and Britain controlled much of the Arab world by the end of WW1. However, the deal between Commissioner McMahon and Husayn Ibn Ali was contradicted by both deals the British made with France and the British Foreign Minister, Lord Arthur Balfour's, declaration of support for Jewish settlement in Palestine (3).
• Arabs were angered by Britain's betrayal of its promise of an independent Arab state and many opposed British and French colonial rule. Palestinian Arabs were especially angry because of massive European Jewish immigration into the territory, which threatened their position in Palestine (4).
• In the aftermath of WW1, Britain and France convinced the League of Nations to grant them quasi-colonial control over former Ottoman territories in the form of mandates. France received the mandates for Syria and Lebanon, which it carved out as a Christian-majority state, and Britain received the mandate for Transjordan, which covered the territories of modern Jordan and Israel (3-4).
• In 1921, Britain divided the mandate of Transjordan into two territories: the Palestinian Mandate in the west and the Kingdom of Jordan, ruled by Husayn Ibn Ali's son Abdullah, in the east (4).
• During the fighting between 1947 and 1949, over 700,000 Palestinians fled their homes. Israeli authorities claim that they left on the orders of Arab military and political leaders, whereas Arabs claim they were expelled by Zionist forces. Numerous records of large scale expulsions of Arabs by Zionist militias, as well as Israeli military intelligence documents estimating that 75% of Arabs fled due to Zionist military offensives, forced expulsions, and psychological operations, suggest that most Palestinians were likely driven out by Zionist forces (5).
• There are still around 3 million Palestinians living in the territories that used to be Mandate Palestine: 700,000 in Israel, 200,000 in East Jerusalem, 1 million in the West Bank, and 1 million in the Gaza Strip. Another 3 million Palestinians constitute a diaspora, of which 1.2 million live in Jordan, with significant Palestinian populations in Syria, Lebanon, and the Gulf States (5).
• Many diaspora Palestinians still live in the refugee camps constructed for them in 1949, particularly in Syria and Lebanon. Jordan was the only state to confer citizenship to Palestinian refugees, and most Palestinians still do not enjoy rights in the states in which they live. In some countries, particularly Lebanon, they are resented for their presence (5-6).
• Being part of a diaspora has contributed to very high levels of education among Palestinians, higher than any other Arab group, and the politicization of most levels of Palestinian society (6).
• The 150,000 Palestinians who remained in Israel after 1948 were given citizenship in the new state, although they were still discriminated against. Around 40% of all Palestinian land was confiscated by the Israeli government and used in development projects that exclusively or predominantly benefitted Jews. Until 1966, Palestinian Israelis were under military government with restricted civil liberties, and they were not allowed to join the Israeli trade union federation, Histadrut, until 1965. Even today, Palestinian Israeli do not receive the same quality of government services (6).
• Most Palestinian Israelis support Israel, even if they also support the establishment of an independent Palestine in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. Palestinian Israelis have had difficult maintaining their identity because any expression of Palestinian identity is viewed as subversive by Israeli authorities (6). 
• After the Six Day War, Israel established a military administration in the West Bank and Gaza, which severely limited basic civil rights and prohibited elements of Palestinian cultural life. Israeli governance has been harsh, characterized by frequent curfews, acts of collective punishment such as demolition or closure of roads or communal buildings, the confiscation of hundreds of thousands of acres of Palestinian land, and the widespread use of torture. Since 1967, hundreds of Palestinian activists have been deported to Jordan or Lebanon, over 300,000 have been imprisoned without trail, over 500,000 have been tried by Israeli military courts, and dozens have died in Israeli custody (7).
• Israel has build hundreds of settlements and facilitated the immigration of hundreds of thousands of Jewish settlers in the West Bank and Gaza, in clear violation of international law (7).
• From 1948 to 1967, the West Bank and East Jerusalem were governed by Jordan, which extended citizenship to all Palestinians there (7).
• Officially, Israel claims that the West Bank and Gaza are not 'occupied territories' since that would imply they were once legally part of a sovereignty entity, which they were not. Instead, Israel is only the 'administrator' of territory whose status has not yet been determined, which it claims exempts Israel from certain responsibilities under international law, such as compliance with the Fourth Geneva Convention (7).
• Israeli forces captured West Jerusalem in 1948, while Jordan occupied the eastern half of the city. Israel captured the entirety of the city in June 1967 and declared it to be the Israeli capital. Palestinians reject this claim and claim Jerusalem as the future capital of an independent Palestine (7-8).
• Officially, the State of Israel remains the state of the Jewish people and discriminates against Gentiles (6).
• The Palestinian Liberation Organization [PLO] was founded by the Arab League in 1964 as a way to control the Palestinian independence struggle, but was taken over by younger and independent-minded Palestinian leaders after the 1967 war. The PLO contains multiple organizations, including Fatah, the largest led by Yasser Arafat; the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine; the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine; and the Palestinian Peoples Party (8).
• In the 1960s, the PLO was mainly based in Jordan, but it was forced to move to Lebanon after conflict with the Jordanian army in 1970 and 1971. The PLO then became involved in the Lebanese Civil War, which started in 1975. It was expelled from Lebanon in 1982 after the Israeli invasion and moved to Tunisia (8).
• Israel traditionally refused to negotiation with the PLO or recognize it as legitimate, only talking with the Arab states. This was part of its insistence that the Palestinians be incorporated into other Arab states. This changed in 1993 with the beginning of backroom talks with the PLO (8).
• The PLO was initially excluded from the first round of peace talks with the Palestinians organized by the USA, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait, and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir in Madrid in October 1991. At this and subsequent talks, known as the Washington negotiations, Palestinian delegates were screened by Israel and those from Jerusalem were excluded, although Palestinian delegates did often informally meet with PLO representatives (10).
• Prime Minister Shamir admitted later that his purpose to pursuing these talks, which made no progress, was to extend then indefinitely to maintain the status quo, at which point he believed Israeli annexation of the West Bank would be a fait accompli (10).
• Despite a commitment by Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, elected in June 1992, to quickly conclude peace talks, the talks stalemated in October 1992 after Israel expelled over 400 Palestinians without trial on accusations of Islamic extremism. This combined, with a deterioration of human rights conditions in the occupied territories, ended the talks (10).
• Secret talks between the PLO and Israel began in 1993, facilitated by Norway. They resulted in the Oslo Accords, signed in September 1993, that pledged Israel would withdraw from Gaza and Jericho, promised further withdrawals after 5 years, and established the Palestinian Authority has the government in those areas. Other major issues were left unresolved. The elections for the Palestinian Authority were held in 1996 and were easily won by Yasser Arafat and the PLO (10).
• The PLO supported Iraq against the US-led coalition following its 1991 invasion of Kuwait, leading to the PLO's diplomatic isolation and financial distress due to Saudi Arabia and Kuwait cutting its funding (9).
• Israel had initially supported Islamist groups to curb the political influence of the PLO, but the growth of Islamic extremism among Palestinians, especially the emergence of Hamas, in the 1990s in response to deteriorating human rights and economic conditions in the occupied territories, led Israel to recognize it as a greater threat and seek to reconcile with the PLO (10).
• Islamist terrorism and Israeli reluctance to pull out troops stalled the Oslo peace process. Israel also stepped away at various points, particularly during Benjamin Netanyahu's government between 1996 and 1999. Israeli attention only returned to the Oslo Accords after Prime Minister Ehud Barak failed to negotiation peace with Syria in 1999 (11).
• At the end of the Oslo Accords process in the mid-2000s, Palestinians directly governed around 40% of the West Bank and 65% of Gaza. All borders, however, were controlled by Israel, which had also continued to build Jewish settlements and a new network of bypass roads connecting the settlements directly to the rest of Israel (11). 
• In December 1987, the Palestinian population of the West Bank and Gaza staged a mass revolt against Israeli rule, called the 'Intifada'. It involved hundreds of thousands of Palestinians practicing both mass civil disobedience and noncooperation and violent attacks on Israeli security forces, killed around 100 Israelis in total (9).
• Israel, under Minister of Defense Yitzhak Rabin, responded to the Intifada with crushing force. Between 1987 and 1991, Israeli forces killed over 1,000 Palestinians and arrested almost the entire organizational leadership.
• The failure of the Intifada and the arrest of PLO leadership led to deeper factions with the Palestinian movement, particularly between the PLO and Islamist groups. Internal rivalries contributed to another 250 Palestinian deaths during the period (9).
• Although it was not organized by the PLO, then based in Tunisia, the Intifada eventually became led by them. The criticism they faced for the failure of the protests led them to radically change their orientation at a meeting in Algeria in November 1988, at which they renounced terrorism, recognized the State of Israel, and proclaimed themselves the government-in-exile of a Palestinian government based in the West Bank and Gaza (9).
• Israel didn't really give a shit about this change in stance and still regarded the PLO as a terrorist organization. The USA recognized a change had occurred (9).
• In July 2000, US President Bill Clinton invited Yasser Arafat and Prime Minister Barak to Camp David to reach a final agreement. The positions of the two sides were ultimately irreconcilable, with Israel demanding control of all of Jerusalem, that Jewish settlements in the West Bank by annexed into Israel, and refusing to accept responsibility for expelling Palestinians; and the Palestinians demanding Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem, and the establishment of an independent Palestinian state in those areas (11).
• Yasser Arafat rejected Israeli terms and ended negotiations, a move that gained him mad cred with other Arab leaders and the Palestinian population (11).
• On 28 September 2000, Ariel Sharon, leader of Likud, visited the Temple Mount with 1000 armed guards. This led to massive Palestinian protests, angry at Ariel Sharon's call for the full annexation of East Jerusalem into Israel and his hardline stance on Israeli control of the holy sites, that ended with 6 protesters being shot by Israeli soldiers (11).
• This incident led to the Second Intifada, stretching across the West Bank, Gaza, and Palestinian communities within Israel proper. The Second Intifada was bloodier, largely because Fatah militias had stockpiled weapons and were already prepared for violence. The Israeli response also employed much more force after 2 soldiers were killed on 12 October in Ramallah, and subsequently Israel has not hesitated to respond to small arms fire with military force (11-12). Between September and December 2000, over 350 people died in the violence, the vast majority of them Palestinian (12).
• Ehud Barak called elections for December 2000 to forestall a vote of no confidence, facing off against Ariel Sharon. At the time of these elections, negotiations, facilitated by the USA, had failed to achieve peace (12).
• The Israel response was broadly condemned by the UN Security Council and UN General Assembly for disproportionate force and the use of live ammunition against unarmed protesters (12).