Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on July 31, 2022

The history of the Middle East has always been captivating especially if the talk is about Palestine and Israel conflict and their history. We all are in some way or the other aware of the disputation and wrangling that goes between both nations from time to time. Today the situation has worsened so much so that it has taken a shape of yet another war.

Rockets are being fired from both sides leading to confiscation of property and most importantly loss of lives, including the lives of civilians and children. Like any other international issue this one as well most countries of the world is fairly divided. While some stand in solidarity with Palestinians others are in support of the Jews of Israel.

To say with great certainty who is right and who is wrong is implausible as both Israelis and Palestinians have suffered in the past and because of their chaotic history, the conflict still continues. But is seeking the path of violence reasonable? To answer that lets dive into the history of Jewish people, the rupture of Palestine, and how the nation which is now known as Israel was born.

Saying that Jews have gone through a lot of cruelty in this world wouldnt be so wrong. They used to live in different parts of the world and never really had a piece of land that they could say was their own. In the late 1800s, Jews living around the world began feeling that no country accepts them as their own. Thus in the year 1897 Zionism, an ideology that aims at the protection and return of Jewish people to their homeland (an area corresponding to Canaan, the holy land, or Palestine) came into being.

Under the Ottoman Empire all Muslims, Christian, and Jews more or less used to live peacefully in Palestine. But with the end of the 1st World War Palestine fell off the hands of the Ottoman Empire and came under the colonization of Britain (1918-1948).

Palestine was a country that was closest to what the Jews could say home. Still, the maximum population that used to live in Palestine was the Muslims.

During 1933-1945, Adolf Hitler was making Europe a living hell for all the Jews, the holocaust is one big example. A lot of Jews tried to flee to Palestine but Britain limited their immigration which further ignited them. Jews just wished to have a piece of land that they could say was their own.

The colonization of Britain in Palestine was still going on. Eventually, a feeling of Palestinian nation came over the Palestinian Arabs and that growing sense of chauvinism exploded in 1936 when Palestine revolted against the British giving birth to the Palestine National movement.

It was in 1948 that Englishmen decided its about time to leave the chaos of Palestine and handed the issues of Palestine to the newly created United Nations. It was via United Nations that the land of Palestine was fairly divided between the non-contiguous Arabs and the Jews to form their own country. About 55% of Palestine was given to Jews and 45% to the non-contiguous Arabs. Gaza Strip and the West Bank were originally being given to the Palestinians. Meanwhile, Jerusalem the holy land of Jews, Muslims, and Christians came under international control.

Jews accepted this division of land by the United Nations and hence this is how in the year 1948, the nation which today is known as Israel came into being. But this is not the end of the story. As a new non-Arab country was formed from the land of Palestine all the Arab nations around the middle-east refused to accept it as a country. They wanted to remove Israel from the world map and take the land back.

The first Arab-Israel war takes place in the same year when the nation Israel was established. To everyones surprise, the newly formed nation Israel won the battle against all the five Arab nations, thus capturing more of Palestines area that actually was given to them by the U.N.

To seek shelter maximum of the Palestinians from the seized land had to flee to the neighboring Arab nations. This is what was regarded as the 1948 Palestinian exodus.

Another six-day war broke out between both nations in the year 1967, where yet again Israel emerged as the victorious one occupying major areas of Palestine that as the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. Maximum of the Israelis started making permanent settlements in the West Bank region where already the Palestinians were living. Thus in the eyes of Palestinians, this was pure colonization by the Israelis.

In 1964 (PLO) Palestine Liberation Organization led by Yasser Arafat was founded with the aim to fight for the liberation of their land from Israelis who came and settled in the West Bank. Unlike most extremist Jews, Yitzhak Rabin, the Prime Minister of Israel in 1992 never considered PLO a terrorist organization.

That was the year when the situation seems to have gotten a little better between the nations. The path of tranquility was taken in order to establish peace and to come to a consensual conclusion on how to divide the land of the West Bank between both nations.

In 1994 the Palestinian government for the first time was established and came to be known as Palestinian National Authority.

With harmony and solidarity, the governance of the West Bank was fairly divided between both nations. Finally, Palestine got the Gaza strip and parts of the West Bank as their own where they could govern themselves and live freely.

But with the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin by the extremist Jews of Israel the situation yet again went downhill between the countries and since then has been deteriorating. Extremists on both ends were responsible for the demise of the newly established peace.

Extremist Islamic individuals came together to form an organization called Hamas in the year 1987. Their motto since the beginning was not to follow the path of peace like the PLO and to get back the land of Israel that in their eyes was looted by the Jews.

With the occasional suicide bombing of Hamas on Israeli land, the estrangement between both nations seems to have gotten worse. In 2007 a civil war broke out in Palestine and in the battle of Gaza the extremist Hamas got control over the Gaza Strip and the distorted lands of Palestine in the West Bank came under the governance of PLO.

Today it is the Gaza Strip area under Hamas that does the bombing and the Israeli in response do the same. There is nothing left but a feeling of hatred and disparity. It should not be like that considering the fact that there was a time when both Jews and Arabs used to live peacefully on the same land.

Palestinians, have been denied a state of their own for a long time, be it under the Ottoman Empire or the British Colonization and even today most of them live under a military organization. As for the Jews, they also had the hardest times in history until the formation of Israel. The Israeli that live in the West Bank are indeed more or less illegal settlers and that is the reason that has intensified the rupture between the countries.

Both nations should understand and respect each other because they both have gone through a lot in the past. They should think about the civilians, the children who are dying because of the rocket fire and bombing. For good, its about time for a ceasefire.

See more here:

History Of Palestine And Israel Conflict And Where They Stand Now - Postoast

Category: Palestine
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