The Middle East history has a high number of full-scale, inter-state wars, such as the wars due to Arab-Israeli conflicts, Yemen war, and Iran-Iraq war. The Arab-Israel conflict has two elements to it, which are the Israeli-Palestinian element and the Israeli-Arab element. At the end of the 1800s, the Promised Land was set up so that the Jewish people can overcome the anti-Semitism and persecution and the migration of Jews to the Promised Land created issues. During WWI, the British convinced the Arab Leaders to revolt against Ottoman Empire as they support Germany, in return for which the British promised them that an independent Arab state. However, Balfour Declaration went back on this by supporting the formation of Jewish National Home in Palestine. Britain and France also carved up parts of Middle East as spoils of war. Due to this, there was one land and two peoples creating a conflict.
The Arab people opposed this, and after the formation of State of Israel in 1948, the conflict shifted to the national level from communal or local level. According to the Arabs, the reason for the conflict is the displacement of Arabs from the Palestinian Arabs compounded by the territorial occupation by Israel, due to which they view Israel as an aggressive and expansionist country, therefore the real cause of violation. The Israelis, however, think that the reason for the conflict due to the challenges posed by the Arab states that reject the right to the sovereignty of Israel, resulting in Israel responding to them in self-defense. Another source of this conflict is the relation between the Arab states. All the people of the Arab countries and Palestine believe that Israel had violated the sacred rights of Palestine, which is the only factor that unites all the Arab states. Otherwise, though the Arab states subscribe to the idea of Arab unity, in practice the relations are mostly characterized by inter-Arab conflicts rather than cooperation.
In 1947, The UN (United Nations), which had fewer developing nations as members, had ordered the partition of Palestine so that the minority Jews got the majority or 57 percent of the land and Arabs 43 percent, thereby internationalizing Jerusalem. The land given to the Jews was better and the Jewish state consisted of about 50 percent of Arabs as its population. The U.S. adopted this plan and promoted it as Truman felt that emigration to Palestine was the right thing for all Jews in the Europe to do, even though he knew that Arabs were hostile to Palestinian Jews. Truman’s decision was opposed by most policy makers and the State Department, as they felt that the partition would create anti-Americanism and would require troops to enforce it. Truman was pandering to the Jewish constituency in America numbering in the hundreds of thousands while there was little Arab presence in the U.S. Those people who were anti-Semitic but did not want to appear so by denying immigration to Jews into the U.S. also supported this move as this gave the Jews an alternative.
The partition of the Palestine by the UN was rejected by the Arabs the Iraqi, Lebanese, Saudi Arabian, Yemeni, Syrian, and Iranian armies attacked Israel but were defeated. The Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc had supported Israel by supplying arms to them, which tipped the balance in favor of them. The Homeland for the Jews was successful but Jerusalem was not internationalized. The Palestinians were ethnically cleansed from Israel and driven into the refugee camps in the surrounding countries while similarly the Jews from the surrounding countries were ousted from those countries and forced to immigrate to Israel. The Suez Canal was nationalized by Egypt in 1956 and Britain, Israel, and France invaded Sinai Peninsula, as they feared losing power further. They defeated Egypt, but pressure from the U.S. and international community made them withdraw from Egypt. After the Suez war debacle that was presided over by the Egyptian president Colonel Gamal Abdel Naseer, he challenged Israel to a duel in 1967 with intentions of brinksmanship. Israel responded with a pre-emptive strike against Egypt, Syria, and Jordan and in the Six-day-war, as it is known, captured Golan Heights, Gaza Strip, Sinai Peninsula, and the West Bank, doubling its size. The negotiations are still going on about returning the land as required by the UN resolution 242 and international laws. Arabs and the Israel interpreted the UN resolution differently and the Israel position has hardened progressively.
As Israel wanted to preserve the status quo so that it could get the Arabs to agree to their terms of settlements, there was a brief period when there was unity amongst the Arabs. The Khartoum resolution agreed on three “noes”; no recognition, no negotiations, and no peace with Israel. This rejection of political options in spite of the lack of any military options showed their lack of any insight. However, President Naseer adopted an active deterrence by re-equipping the armed forces and wanted to lift the Middle East conflict to the international level by involving the Soviet Union deeply. The Soviet Union increased military support to Egypt and Syria and was diplomatically involved in the Middle East. It was against an all-out war but supported commando raids across the Suez Canal by the Egypt, which developed into what is known as the War of Attrition. President Naseer thought that this could exhaust Israel psychologically and impose an economic burden on Israel that it cannot tolerate and thereby change the status quo.
After the War of Attrition ended in a military draw, the diplomatic deadlock was broken by a well-coordinated surprise attack on Israel by Egypt and Syria on 6 October 1973, called the Yom Kippur War. This was because of the failure of international diplomacy due to the intransigence of Israel, the flow of arms from superpowers, and growing Arab unity due to Sadat’s focus on the political solution. Sadat was ready for a peaceful resolution of the situation under UN resolution 242, then again for a limited pull back from Israel, but Israel refused and under Golda Meir, it kept raising the price for the political settlement. Sadat strove for a joint action and used all resources including Oil, as an advantage so that the international community would have to take notice. Sadat expelled Soviet military advisers when they failed to support him so they had to supply arms to the Arab allies, while the U.S. provided unlimited support to the Israel, to keep the Soviet Union out of the war, inadvertently precipitating the war. In 1978, the Camp David accord returned Sinai back to Egypt in exchange for peace. To the U.S. and Israel this was an achievement, but for the Arabs, it was Egypt selling out to the U.S pressure.
The 1980s saw the Palestinian Intifada and the Lebanon war of 1982, which was the result of an unresolved dispute between the Israel and the Arabs. Israel invaded Lebanon provoking the clash between them and the PLO and Syrian armies. While it was called the Operation Peace for Galilee, the aim was to install an Israel-friendly regime in Lebanon, thereby intervening in the Arab politics as Syria had intervened on behalf of Christians in the internal civil war in Lebanon in 1976 thereby controlling Levant. Ariel Sharon, the defense minister of Israel, wanted to break the backbone of PLO and therefore the Palestinian rebellion. However, the U.S. brokered a cease-fire between PLO and Israel. When a renegade terrorist Abu Nidal perpetrated a failed assassination attempt against Israeli Ambassador in London, Israel immediately attacked. While the U.S. and the Soviet did not support the war but did not do enough to stop it either. While Ronald Reagan announced a plan for a Palestinian homeland, it floundered due to Israel’s intransigence.
The Iran-Iraq war lasted eight years, which was started by Iran in 1980. The oil-rich Arab countries and the U.S. created a monster called Saddam Hussein. Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait on 2 August 1990 resulted in a war on 16 January 1991, in which all the Arab states in the Middle East and the Gulf were involved. It was an Arab-Arab conflict, but Iraqi President Saddam Hussein tried to convert it into Arab-Israel conflict, though it ended as a conflict between the western powers and Iraq. Sudan, South Yemen, and the PLO sided with Saddam, Jordan, and Egypt wanted to mediate, and the rest of the Arab states opposed the invasion fearing for their own security. Saddam tried to pull Israel into this by promising to get out of Kuwait if Israel returned the occupied territories, and provoked Israel by using missile strikes, but uncharacteristically, Israel did not respond, thereby thwarting Saddam’s efforts. U.S. took a proactive role by drumming a large coalition, getting all the resolutions passed in the UN, and launched the Operation Desert Storm, which removed Saddam Hussein and returned the Kuwaiti Government. The Soviet Union, which was in the final stages of disintegration, could not play a major part.
In 1993, based on the Oslo Peace Accord, Israel recognized PLO and limited autonomy was given to it if they gave up a claim on Israeli territory. In April 1996, Lebanon was bombed by Israeli forces and Israel shelled a UN shelter, killing civilians, while Hezbollah retaliated by bombing the populated Northern Israel. In October 1998, the Wye River Memorandum about an Israeli withdrawal from some parts of West Bank was proposed but it was later suspended due to internal disagreements on its implementation. In 2000, the Camp David summit failed to reach an accord on Jerusalem, Ariel Sharon proclaimed the holy site Temple Mount by the Israelis, and Haram al-Sharif by Muslims as their territory, which infuriated the Arabs resulting in more violence by the Palestinians. The Palestinians have had limited rights, live in abject poverty, have no nation, while Israel kept encroaching upon more and more Palestinian territory. Palestinians living in Israel pay full taxes but have limited rights and some of them do not have any voting rights. The U.S. and Israel policies in the Middle East have resulted in frustration leading to extremism and terrorism. Israel has started building wire fences to protect themselves against terrorists, but they have built these by encroaching into Palestinian territory. In 2004, Sharon announced the withdrawal of troops from Gaza strip but more settlements in the West Bank. The anger and frustration has mounted as more and more Palestinian land, which is pristine, has been occupied by the Israel, bulldozing of many homes by Israel in the pretext of killing extremists but often kills more innocents, and has continued to bomb official building while advocating for a crackdown on suicide bombers. This has resulted in people supporting more extremist groups such as the Hamas. Many UN resolutions critical of Israel have been vetoed by the U.S. The mainstream western media has propagated a negative imagery about Islam and Arab world to justify U.S. presence there, exacerbating the issue.
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