The Basics Behind the Arab-Israeli Conflict [external source]

It's an issue where, if brought up as dinner conversation, knives generally need to be removed from the table: the Mideast question. The seemingly never-ending struggle for the Holy Land intertwines the hot-button issues of politics, religion, territorial claims, and war in one imperfect storm with a bleak forecast.

The Israelis say that, as they are constantly under militant attack of varying degrees, the very survival of the Jewish state hangs in the balance. The Palestinians claim a right to return to the land that refugees fled in the 1948 Arab-Israeli war or the Six Day War in 1967. Even the means of conflict stoke controversy: Many Palestinians support suicide bombings and other militant attacks that often target civilians, arguing that they're exercising their present military capability and that the attacks are legitimate since civilians have been killed in Israeli strikes. When Israelis respond to attacks with their superior firepower, they are accused of using overkill on the Palestinian population. The Palestinian government is constantly asked to rein in a disparate mass of militants, even though they can't even keep a unity government together. The Israeli government is criticized when they use means such as sanctions and blockades to try to force the Palestinian Authority's hand in stopping attacks on the Jewish state.

So with each failed peace accord, each round of negotiations that encounters numerous sticking points, and internal political strife among the negotiating parties, it seems as if any road map to peace just becomes a roadblock to peace. Coming up with a solution to the Mideast crisis, though, starts with an understanding of the underlying issues and personalities.

Current Status
The Gaza Strip has been under the control of the Palestinian Authority since Israel's 2005 withdrawal, but a power-sharing breakdown between the Palestinian parties Fatah and Hamas in 2007 turned the strip into a lawless, Hamas-ruled region where militants have flourished and launch rockets into Israel with daily regularity. The West Bank is partially controlled by Israel and partially controlled by the Palestinian Authority, with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas ruling out of the government headquarters in Ramallah.

Israel has been constructing a separation barrier between it and the West Bank to deter terrorist attacks that spiked with the 2000 al-Aqsa Intifadah, yet many international onlookers have criticized the barrier. Syria continues to lay claim to the Golan Heights, captured by Israel in the 1967 Six Day War along with Gaza, the West Bank, and the Sinai Peninsula.

Even the holy city of Jerusalem is a sticking point in peace talks: most Palestinians want east Jerusalem (the al-Aqsa mosque is in the Old City) but many want no less than all of Jerusalem, where Jewish holy sites such as the Western Wall exist as well.

On the positive front, Israel has had lasting peace agreements with Jordan and Egypt. However, on Israel's northern borders the Islamic group Hezbollah operates out of Lebanon and Syria; Hezbollah sparked the 2006 war with Israel when the group launched a cross-border attack on Israeli soldiers and captured two. Longtime rivals Hezbollah and Hamas also appear to be joining forces toward the common goal of battling the Jewish state: Palestinians claimed that the two groups joined forces for the March 2008 shooting rampage at a Jerusalem rabbinical seminary.

History
In 1920, the League of Nations approved a plan for a Jewish homeland; this became the British Mandate of Palestine. Before this point, Jewish settlers fleeing the pogroms of Eastern Europe had been arriving in the Holy Land; these immigration numbers surged with the rise of the Nazis and the aftermath of the Holocaust. The United Nations approved a 1947 partition of the area into Jewish and Arab states. Israel declared independence on May 14, 1948.

The day after declaring independence, the Arab-Israeli war began, and hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fled to refugee camps in the West Bank, Gaza Strip, Syria, and Lebanon. Jordan was the only Arab country willing to take in a significant number of Palestinians. The 1967 Six Day War was launched in response to Egypt, Syria, and Jordan massing troops along Israel's borders; in the war, Israel captured territory including the West Bank and the Gaza Strip and more Palestinians fled. In the 1973 Yom Kippur War, Egypt and Syria attacked on the High Holy Day, resulting in a tougher fight for the Israelis and the eventual downfall of Prime Minister Golda Meir's government.

The Camp David Accords and the Israel-Egypt Peace Treaty of 1978 and 1979 resulted in Israel's withdrawal from the oil-rich Sinai and the designation of Gaza and the West Bank as Palestinian territories. The Palestine Liberation Organization didn't recognize Israel's right to exist until the 1993 Oslo Accords, which paved the way for the creation of the Palestinian Authority. Israel and Jordan signed a peace treaty in 1994. The 2000 Camp David Summit produced little more than impasse, and the Second Intifada (al-Aqsa Intifada) began just over two months later. The 2004 death of Yasser Arafat and subsequent election of Mahmoud Abbas as Palestinian president left many hopeful that the "road map" for peace could get back on track, but the 2006 election wins by Hamas and subsequent unity dissolution now means that Abbas is basically negotiating for the West Bank alone.


On the Israeli side
Israel has internal issues that inadvertently affect how the Mideast conflict will turn out. It was former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon who took two key actions to overcome what he saw as stalling in the peace process: first, he left his Likud party to form a centrist Kadima party. Prominent Israelis who followed him were current President Shimon Peres, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, and current Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who took over after Sharon suffered a crippling stroke in January 2006.

Second, he orchestrated the 2005 Israeli pullout from the Gaza Strip. At the time, Sharon's finance minister, former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, resigned in protest, but increasing numbers of Israelis have questioned the success of the withdrawal in the years since -- particularly as the Palestinian unity government has split and Hamas rules over a largely lawless Strip from which attacks continue to be launched against Israel. This security situation has put Netanyahu's Likud party in a better position for future potential legislative gains, but the performance of Olmert is also likely to help Likud's future.

Olmert has been involved in various financial scandals during his term, but public opinion largely turned against him after the bungled 2006 war with Hezbollah in Lebanon. Not only did the U.N. ceasefire leave Hezbollah with bragging rights (and U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Zalmay Khalilzad says Hezbollah has been rearming in violation of Security Council resolution 1701), but the Israeli soldiers captured at that time on the Lebanon border and near the Gaza Strip -- seizures that largely sparked the battle -- remain missing.

Even Livni has called Olmert's leadership into question, and it remains to be seen how long he'll remain in office -- or how his eventual successor will deal with the Palestinian issue.

On the Palestinian side
The greatest hurdle for the Palestinians to overcome is internal disunity. While the current leaders share similar ambitions of a Palestinian state, that's where the similarities tend to stop.

President Mahmoud Abbas, of the Fatah party, favors a two-state solution and has met often with Israeli leaders to discuss the peace process. But Hamas' win in the 2006 parliamentary elections created another hurdle: Hamas is considered a terrorist organization by the United States, Canada, and Japan, and the European Union labels Hamas as being involved in terrorist attacks. Hamas has refused to budge on some key issues that would get the peace process moving: they refuse to recognize the state of Israel, and refuse to renounce violence against the Jewish state.

In 2007, battles between Hamas and Fatah grew increasingly nasty; Human Rights Watch accused both Fatah and Hamas of "war crimes" after incidents including Abbas' cook being thrown off a 15-story building in Gaza. After this split, Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh was replaced with Salam Fayyad on the basis of a "national emergency." Haniyeh has refused to accept the dismissal.

That year, Hamas took control of Gaza, leaving the Palestinian Authority in charge of only the West Bank. Hamas continues to be controlled by hardliner Khaled Mashal from his offices in Damascus, Syria; he tries to get concrete political and financial support from others in the Arab world, including King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, who has come through both on the P.R. front and in the pocketbook.

Still, Gaza under Hamas reached such dire financial straits because of the Israeli blockade (enacted because of constant rocket fire into Israel from Gaza) that Palestinians tore down the border fence with Egypt in January 2008 and poured across to buy food and other supplies. The situation has strained relations with Egypt, which plans to build a tougher border wall with more guardposts.

Where it Stands
Israel has planned big celebrations for its 60th anniversary in 2008, and these may further inflame tensions. The Palestinian Authority, as reported by The Jerusalem Post, plans to implement the "right of return" to "mark Israel's 60th anniversary by calling on all Palestinians living abroad to converge on Israel by land, sea and air." Though Fatah is behind this call, Hamas and perhaps Hezbollah will likely find their own ways to mark the occasion, as well. Meanwhile, the governments of both Israel and the Palestinian Authority remain in flux, leaving the prospect of a conclusive settlement far from reach.

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