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The ancient land called Palestine has been settled by both Arabs and Jews since biblical times. A movement called Zionism, designating Palestine as a new nation for the scattered Jewish people, was started in the 1890s by the Austrian journalist Theodor Herzl and quickly began to focus Jewish ambition and Arab discontent. Jews from Eastern Europe began to emigrate to Palestine. Before this, Jews and Arabs (mainly Muslims) lived side-by-side, with all the ordinary attendant difficulties associated with two different cultures in close contact. In modern times, Palestine was first in the hands of the Ottoman Empire (until 1918) and then controlled by Great Britain, under an internationally sanctioned mandate (1919-48) following World War I. The policy of the Ottomans toward Palestine was benign neglect of both Arabs and Jews. The British looked with favor alternately on one side or the other.

Arabs and Jews clung to legitimate claims to the land by way of two documents: for the Arabs, the McMahon-Husein Correspondence, in which the Arabs were promised the right to a new Arab nation in the lands of the former Ottoman Empire; and for the Jews the Balfour Declaration, issued by the British in 1917, which stated: "His Majesty's Government view with favor the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people." Each new wave of Zionist immigration to Palestine in the 1920s and 1930s evoked increasingly violent Arab reactions. The culmination of these responses was the Arab insurrection of 1936 against both the Jews and the British; it lasted three years. World War II followed, and its aftermath saw a set of initiatives to reach a peaceful solution. United Nations Resolution 181, mediating Arab and Jewish claims, called for a partition of Palestine into separate states. The Jews agreed. The Arabs did not. At midnight on May 14, 1948, the state of Israel officially came into existence.

Thus began the first of the Arab-Israeli wars. Jewish armies confronted the combined military of Egypt, Transjordan (a state, later Jordan, created by a British division of Palestine in 1922), Syria, and Iraq--as well as loosely organized and lightly armed local Palestinians. Israel won the war, though it sustained heavy casualties. The West Bank region of Palestine came under the control of Transjordan, while Egypt occupied the Gaza Strip. The war also created a large population of Palestinian Arab refugees, who were cared for in camps maintained by the UN in neighboring Arab states. As a result of the war, relations between Israeli Jews and Palestinians deteriorated further. Arabs were angrily disappointed; Jews were warier than ever.

The second of the wars took place in October of 1956, after Egypt, in response to the failure of the Western nations to help finance the Aswan-Dam, nationalized the Suez Canal. Britain and France, joint owners of the canal, attacked Egypt a few days later, joined by Israeli forces, which occupied the Sinai Peninsula. Israel eventually withdrew, but, once again, the conflict grew in bitterness.

In 1967, unable to resist calls for war within the Muslim Middle East, Egypt, Syria, and Jordan gathered armies on Israel's frontiers. Israel struck first, however, and, in just six days, defeated these combined forces again. This time, the Israelis took control of the West Bank, Gaza, the Sinai Peninsula, the Golan Heights of Syria, and the whole of Jerusalem. More Arab refugees fled into the camps in Lebanon and Jordan. The loss of Jerusalem was a particularly painful blow to the Arab community, since the enemy now occupied the ancient Islamic holy sites. In late November, the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 242, calling for the exchange of land for peace. Both Israel and the Arabs rejected the proposal.

Then, in 1973, on the Jews' holiest day, Yom Kippur, Egypt and Syria launched a surprise attack that caused enormous destruction and casualties on the Israeli side; the Arab armies' initial success engendered a new sense of confidence in the Arab world. Israel recovered, however, and pushed the armies back from the territory they had recaptured. The Yom Kippur War, also known as the Ramadan War, increased the hatred between the two parties.

In later years, hostilities deepened, exacerbated by the establishment of new Israeli settlements in the occupied territories, Gaza and the West Bank. Continual bloodshed became a hallmark of the region. Extremist Arabs vented their bitterness and made political statements through suicide bombings in the streets of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem; the Israelis answered with savage troop movements into the Arab-controlled towns.

What had begun as a local conflict in the 1920s and 1930s expanded to a regional one in the 1940s and to the whole of the Muslim world and beyond in the 1950s. On a number of critical occasions, the United States as well as the UN has attempted to bring together the two parties for peace conferences, but they have only been partly successful. On both sides, medieval rigidities persist.

The Palestinian Arabs long for a state of their own--an existence free from what they see as Israeli occupation and oppression. They want a homeland, and they mourn the loss of their holy places in Jerusalem. They are also firm in demanding the right of return of the refugees who fled in 1948 and the removal of Israeli settlements in the occupied territories, principally the West Bank. For their part, the Israelis want secure borders and safety from Arab attacks...

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