History of Israel-Palestein conflict -as and how lightly my small brain process it.

Hell this history is damn sickening and making me dizzy.But I an keen to know what is it that makes this whole region and conflict an unresolvable one.So,this is my understanding of what I read over days and days and days..phew..Please do correct if I go wrong and share your thoughts..

 

 Once upon a time,there was a place named Judea,whose human settlement can be traced back to stone age.This place is believed to be dwelling  and burial place of personalities mentioned in Torah.

  

Later,Romans conquered this land.According to Christian belief, Jesus Christ was born in Bethlehem, Judea, in the early years of Roman rule. Roman rulers drove the Jews out of Jerusalem and named the land Palastina.Many Jews migrated to far away lands-Alexandria,Europe etc etc but there was never complete abandonment of Jews from the land.Palestein was later conquered and inhabited by Ottomans  for over thousand years.

 

 During the seventh century Muslim Arab armies moved north from Arabia to conquer most of the Middle East, including Palestine. Jerusalem was conquered  by the Caliph Umar (Omar) who gave his protection to its inhabitants. Muslim powers controlled the region until the early 1900’s. The rulers allowed Christians and Jews to keep their religions. However, most of the local population gradually accepted Islam and the Arab-Islamic culture of their rulers.Now this made the Christians in Europe irritated and agitated.This land,Jeruselem was holy for them too and they were afraid of Islam’s wide spread acceptance..

 

Now starts the time of Crusaders (1095-1291). The Crusades originated from a strong sense of religious piety . A crusader would, after pronouncing a solemn vow, receive a cross from the hands of the pope or his legates, and was thenceforth considered a “soldier of the Church”.The aim was to  retake the Holy Land from the Muslims. The Holy Land included Jerusalem (where the death, resurrection and ascension into heaven of Jesus took place according to Christian theology) and Antioch (the first Christian city). Further, they believed that by retaking Jerusalem they would go straight to heaven after death.

 

The Jews and Muslims fought together to defend Jerusalem against the invading Franks(predominantly French-speaking Western Christians). They were unsuccessful though but later the crusaders entered the city.Again, they proceeded to massacre the remaining Jewish and Muslim civilians and destroyed mosques and the city itself. There were eight crusader peroids and you can read a short description here ,from a jewish source.

 

When the Crusaders opened up transportation routes from Europe, pilgrimages to the Holy Land became popular and, at the same time, increasing numbers of Jews sought to return to their homeland. After the overthrow of the Crusaders by a Muslim army under Saladin, the Jews were again accorded a certain measure of freedom, including the right to live in Jerusalem. Although the Crusaders regained a foothold in the country after Saladin’s death, their presence was limited to a network of fortified castles. Crusader authority in the Land ended after a final defeat by the Mamluks, a Muslim military class which had come to power in Egypt.

 

 

Gosh…are you bored???

 

 

These Mamluks were defeated by Ottomans .When Napolean entered the scene,most Arabs and Jews left the land in search of better lives.Later,when things started settiling down,both Arabs and Jews started to come back to their homeland.

  

Then started the rise of Zionism(establishment of Jewish nation) and more and more Jews started migrating to Palestein. By 1914, the total population of Palestine stood at about 700,000. About 615,000  were Arabs, and 85,000 to 100,000 were Jews.

 

 

During the first world war, Ottoman Empire joined Germany and Austria-Hungary against the Allies.After the war, Britain and France planned to divide the Ottoman holdings in the Middle East among themselves . After the war, the League of Nations divided much of the Ottoman Empire into mandated territories. The Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916 called for part of Palestine to be under British rule, part to be placed under a joint Allied government, and for Syria and Lebanon to be given to the France. Britain offered to back Arab demands for postwar independence from the Ottomans in return for Arab support for the Allies and seems to have promised the same territories to the Arabs,as the land promised to Jews. The Arabs claimed that Palestine was included in the area promised to them, but the British denied this.

 

 In November 1917, before Britain had conquered Jerusalem and the area to be known as Palestine, Britain issued the Balfour Declaration. The Arabs opposed the idea of a Jewish national home, considering that the areas now called Palestine were their land. The Arabs felt they were in danger of dispossession by the Zionists, and did not relish living under Jewish rule. The area granted to the mandate was much larger than the area sought by the Zionists.

 

 

During 1921-1929,in opposition to the Balfour declaration and fears that the Arabs of Palestine would be dispossessed, Arab nationalists opposed to the Balfour declaration, the mandate and the Jewish National Home, instigated riots against Jews .The Arabs claimed that Jewish immigration and land purchases were displacing and dispossessing the Arabs of Palestine. The British tried to stop Jewish immigration ,otherwise further Jewish immigration would infringe on the position of the existing Arab population.But this was highly criticized by Zionists and later Pm Ramsey clarified that they don’t intend to control immigration and in the subsequent years, Jewish immigration to Palestine increased significantly.

 

 Then happened the Holocaust.From my reading I understand that Nazism refers to “National Socialists” and they hated German Jews,because they believed that Germany lost the first World war due to back stabbing from Jews within the country.Due to the oppression of Naiz and also as British had tried to control immigration to Palestein,Jews formed  “Institution of Illegal Immigration” and started moving to Palestein.

 

 Late World War 2, The US and other countries brought pressure to bear on the British to allow immigration. The Arabs brought pressure on the British to block such immigration. The British found Palestine to be ungovernable and returned the mandate to the United Nations, successor to the League of Nations.lol..(sorry for laughing,I find all this sick 🙄 )

 

 In 1947 – The United Nations Special Commission on Palestine (UNSCOP) recommended that Palestine be divided into an Arab state and a Jewish state. The commission called for Jerusalem to be put under international administration. The Jews accepted the UN decision, but the Arabs rejected it. The resolution divided the land into two approximately equal portions in a complicated scheme with zig-zag borders. The intention was an economic union between the two states with open borders. At the time of partition, slightly less than half the land in all of Palestine was owned by Arabs, slightly less than half was “crown lands” belonging to the state, and about 8% was owned by Jews or the Jewish Agency. There were about 600,000 Jews in Palestine, almost all living in the areas allotted to the Jewish state or in the internationalized zone of Jerusalem, and about 1.2 million Arabs.

 

 

The scheme did not work. Mutual antagonism would make it impossible for either community to tolerate the other. The UN was unwilling and unable to force implementation of the internationalization of Jerusalem. The Arab League,declared a war to rid Palestine of the Jews. In fact however, the Arab countries each had separate agendas. Abdullah, king of Jordan, had an informal and secret agreement with Israel, negotiated with Golda Meir, to annex the portions of Palestine allocated to the Palestinian state in the West Bank, and prevent formation of a Palestinian state. Syria wanted to annex the northern part of Palestine, including Jewish and Arab areas.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Grrrrrrrrrrrrr I am sick..The rest of history, where we see how unfair things turned out to a particular section of population.. This is all the background one needs to know when trying to understand the conflict in the region. Without this information, we will be just watching drama  from the halfway.

 

 

 

p.s :

 

Web is a web with lot  of biased information from both sides..I tried to get info from seemingly unbiased sources.If I seem wrong,pls correct.It took me 5 hours to write this. ***faints***

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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2009

01/13

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TAGS

Christianity
Crusaders
gaza conflict
history of conflict
islam
israel
Jeruselem
palestein
UN
Zionism

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