the Ethnic conflict between Israel and Palestine

Introduction

The middle east and Africa comprise new countries that were created after 1945. These new nation-states arose following the collapse of European colonial rule. During the Cold War, the two regions were subject to intense competition between Washington and Moscow. Middle Eastern and African leaders, in some cases, learned to manipulate the superpower rivalry to their own advantage; others attempted to do so with far less success. In addition to the Cold War, new forms of political leadership, population pressure, health crises, external debt, and economic dependence were major factors in the evolution of Middle Eastern and African nations in the second half of the twentieth century.

Four major developments conditioned the evolution of the Middle East in the second half of the twentieth century: the struggle over Palestine (known also as the Arab-Israeli Conflict), decolonization, the exploitation of oil resources, and the Cold War. (The latter three factors, it is important to note, also characterized regions of Africa and Latin America.) Toward the end of the century, a fifth development, the rise in popularity and activity of Islamist movements, has challenged the established, largely secular regimes of the Middle East and North Africa. World attention was drawn to the region, and the politics of Islamic activism, by the attacks on the World Trade Center (September 11, 2001) and the related bombings in Madrid (March 11, 2004) and London (July 7, 2005), all of which are purported to have been carried out by cells attached to or inspired by the radical Islamist group al-Qaeda. This paper discusses Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Discussion

Decolonization was a gradual and often wrenching process. Although certain Arab states were granted independence in the interwar period, the mandate powers, Britain and France, retained a significant military and economic presence in the region. During World War II, England reoccupied Iraq and used Egypt as a staging ground for its war effort. Only in the generation after the war did the nation-states of the Middle East gain full independence. (Efrat 724-729)

In the meantime, the arrival of waves of European Jews seeking refuge in Palestine after the war, Zionist mobilization (which aimed at the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine), and Great Power political alignments led to the creation of the state of Israel in 1948. This touched off a bitter conflict between the new Jewish state and its Arab neighbors, who viewed Israel as illegitimate and a symbol of continued European imperialism in the region.

In the aftermath of the creation of Israel, a determined group of Egyptian army officers decided to free Egypt from the last vestiges of British control. Gamal Abdel Nasser (d. 1970), a colonel in the Egyptian army and a veteran of the first Arab-Israeli war in Palestine in 1948, organized the revolution that overthrew King Faruq in 1952. He proceeded to remake Egypt into a republic in 1953 and challenged British control over the Suez Canal. Nasser became a hero of Arab nationalism and the Non-Aligned Movement, winning ...