This report is being written by Nazakat Tak
Introduction :
The unwavering conflict between the Israel i.e. the world’s only Jewish state and the Palestine consisting of the Arab population, which is the most controversial and polarizing issues within modern day international politics is essentially over who gets what land, how is it to be controlled and complex modern politics. The conflict between the two fighting for the right to peaceful statehood existence, within the same geographical region of the middle east began in the early 20th century but it can be dated back to the couple of thousand years when the Jews, fleeing from persecution in Europe wanted to establish a state of their own which was resisted by the Arabs who saw the land as rightfully theirs, as a result of which several wars were fought, the major wars among those include the wars fought in 1948 and 1967. The war of 1967 is of greater importance so far as the current situation is concerned because it transferred west bank and Gaza strip under the control of Jews[].The continuous string of wars between the two parties to the conflict have to lead to a situation very difficult to resolve .it is difficult to make the west bank a part of an independent Palestine because Israel has built settlements and constructed barriers which formed a de-facto border, it’s difficult to decide to which part the Jerusalem shall belong as both sides claim it to be their center. Besides, there is a dispute between the two sides regarding refugees as well. So, the conflict between the two is essentially regarding the Holy land, which is of greater religious, cultural and political importance to both the parties to the conflict.
The term holy land usually refers to a territory roughly corresponding to the modern state of Israel, the Palestinian territories, western Jordan and parts of southern Lebanon and of southwestern Syria. The city of Jerusalem is sacred to many religious traditions, including the Abrahamic religions Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, which consider it a holy city .some of the most sacred places for each of these religions are found in Jerusalem and the one shared between all three is the Temple Mount.
Jerusalem has been the holiest city in Judaism and the ancestral and spiritual homeland of the Jewish people since the 10 century BC. It is given such a special status in Jewish law that Jews outside Jerusalem pray facing its direction and believe that the land was promised by God to the children of Abraham i.e. Israelis and hence the claim.
So far as the Islamic stand is concerned, Jerusalem is the sacred site along with Mecca and Medina because it is believed that the previous prophets of Islam were associated with the city and the last messenger of Islam Prophet Mohammad (saw) visited the city on a nocturnal journey as per Islamic belief and besides it is also regarded to be the first qibla and hence has a great significance for Muslims generally and the inhabitants of Palestine in particular.
History.
The conflict between the two though very ancient but it gathered gravity in 1917 when the official support of Britain was extended to Jewish National home in Palestine by Arthur James Balfour, the then British foreign Secretary, ignoring the rights of Arabs of Palestine which ultimately led to violence and when Britain was not able to contain the violence it withdrew its forces from Palestine in 1948, the time when the UN was created and hence the matter was now to be resolved by the UN itself.
UN took its first step to resolve this matter by presenting a partition plan which provided for the creation of separate Jewish and Arab states in Palestine which were accepted by most of the Jews but most of the Arabs rejected it.
When Israel declared its independence in 1948 a war took place between the two states the outcome of which was that Israel controlled about 50% of more territory than was suggested but the UN, Jordan controlled west bank, Jerusalem holy sites, and Egypt controlled Gaza but the Jews were removed from inside of the Gaza by Israel in 2005 however it maintained tight control over the border crossing.
Shortly after 16 years i.e. in 1967, another war took place between Arabs and Israeli where Israel seized Golan heights from Syria, the west bank and east Jerusalem from Jordan and Sinai Peninsula and Gaza strip from Egypt. Currently, the west bank is nominally controlled by the Palestinian authority but is under Israeli occupation in the sense that the Israeli troops enforce security Restrictions and the Gaza strip is the control of Hamas, an Islamist fundamentalist party with no ground troop occupation.
The year of 1975 proved to be very important for Palestinians as the UN in the year of 1975 gave observer status to the Palestine liberation organization (PLO)and recognized the Palestinians right to self-determination but irrespective of this recognition violence continued between the two which led to the formation of Hamas in 1987, which is an offshoot of Egypt’s Muslim brotherhood seeking to free Palestine by jihad. It was in this year only when the tension in occupied territories of west bank and Gaza reached a crucial point which led to the first intifada i.e. a war between Palestinian militants and Israeli army.
After the grave violence which led to wastage of innocent lives of thousands of people on both the sides, PLO and Israel agreed to recognize each other and renounce violence under an accord called Oslo Accords in 1993 which led to the establishment of Palestinian Authority which received autonomy in some parts of the west bank and the Gaza strip.
Current situation.
After the gulf war against Kuwait whereby Palestinians supported Iraq, Palestinians lost financial and military support of Arabs(Zahler Reuben Israel Palestinian conflict, Oregon Hilel Eugene OR20 Nov 2014 lecture) but since the international community has recognized the problem of a Palestinian refugee, western nations came forward for support .so far as the negotiation is concerned, more rounds of negotiation occurred like the one led by the then us president Bill Clinton i.e. the camp David ii, but this too didn’t fructify and was followed by intifada second i.e. the Al-Aqsa intifada which erupted between the two parties in the year 2000 which left severe and deep imprints in the entire region, by 2003, 2,400 Palestinians and 800 Israelis have died with hundreds more wounded and traumatized (Bunton martin p. the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, a very short introduction Np,97 print). The then Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon sought to disrupt the Palestinian authority economic and physical infrastructure (ibid.) Israel deployment of tanks, helicopters, and troops were placed in Palestinian territories. The aim of above-mentioned Prime Minister was to separate the Israeli from Palestinians and not to opt for any negotiations.
The largely tumultuous decade of the 2000s resulted in more and radical threats more insecurity, intense military retaliation and continual hardship for a daily Palestinian, and when we consider the violence in Gaza strip, there occur semi-frequent conflicts like 2008 Israel-Gaza war, 2012 conflict and the war of 2014 which usually resulted in protests across the west bank, IDF bombings and ground invasions in Gaza among other violations.
The Israeli Govt. has taken a strict stand so far as its dealings with the Palestinians are concerned within the scope of international humanitarian law because it continues to impose unjustifiable restrictions on Palestinian human rights, not allowing the moment of goods and people in and out of Gaza strip and by allowing the Israeli citizens to settle in the occupied Gaza strip. The restrictions so imposed in Gaza result in limited access to educational institutions, medical care, economic and other opportunities, clean water, and electricity as a result of which 80% of population depend on humanitarian aid.
The international human rights standards continue to be violated at the hands of Israeli forces by firing live ammunition at peaceful demonstrators in Gaza and open fire operations. According to Al-Mezan, a Palestinian rights group, Israeli forces killed 34 Palestinians and 1883 were injured with live ammunition during the protests in 2019 as per the Gaza health ministry. These violations also resulted in unlawful attacks and civil causalities on both sides.
According to Israeli Group Peace Now, in 2019 plans for 5995 housing units in west bank settlements were approved by Israeli authorities, excluding east Jerusalem as compared to 5618 in 2018. The cabinet officials of Israel approved the ex-post-facto the outpost settlement of Mevo’ot Yericho in the Jordan valley, something that is illegal even under Israeli law. Besides, the Israeli authorities also destroyed 504 Palestinians homes and other structures and provide them with no construction permit in East Jerusalem, or west bank i.e. under its control. According to the UN office of the coordination of humanitarian affairs, the demolitions displaced 642 people.
Israel responds to the launching of rockets or incendiary balloons from Gaza resulting into causalities of civilians by restricting Gaza’s access to territorial waters for fishermen, closing Israel crossings to Gaza, slashing fuel imports to the Gaza power plant as a punishment.
Stand of international community.
As far as the international community is concerned, a different approach is being shown by different countries regarding the Israeli-Palestinian issue. The US has recognized the Israeli annexation of the Golan Heights, imposed and expanded aid cuts to the west bank and Gaza including the USAID projects, declared that the US does not consider the Israeli settlements to violate international humanitarian law. The US states also penalized the global tourism company Airbnb under anti-boycott laws for its pledge to remove listings from Israeli settlements in the west bank from its website and hence it reversed its pledge.
The European Union criticized the demolition in Sur Baher, Jerusalem, and the Israelis politician Netanyahu’s promise to annex the Jordan valley.
Even the prosecutor for the international criminal court instead of commencing a probe into the Palestinian situation, requested the ruling from the court with regard to the matter that if the Palestine is a state for the purpose of jurisdiction of the concerned court with regard to the occupied Palestinian territory.
In Feb. 2020 US President Donald Trump announced a controversial peace plan for the region that would legalize Israeli settlements in the west bank and East Jerusalem and allow annexation of the parts of the west bank while Jerusalem would remain the undivided capital of Israel.
This proposal was rejected by the Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas on the basis that this plan will not bring peace or stability to the region as it annuls the legitimacy of Palestinian rights including the right to self-determination. He said that it is an Israeli- American plan to put an end to the question of Palestine. But the Israeli ambassador Danny Danon considered this approach as a sane plan to end the longstanding conflict.
The US envoy Mr. Mladenov expressed hope that the ambassador will support the Secretary General’s call for negotiation for the solution of the conflict. He held that “in the absence of the credible path back to negotiations, we all face a heightened risk of violence. Violence, which will drag both peoples and the region to a spiral of escalation with no end in sight”.
So far as the stand of the world, with regard to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is concerned the bitter truth that one simply understands is that the legitimacy of Israel is recognized by the non-Muslim countries who maintain diplomatic relations with it but some of them have taken the unbiased stand and have criticized the Israelis treatment of the Palestinians and its occupation of the west bank. When we look at the global public opinion, we realize that it is more sympathetic to the cause of Palestine which has created a concern among the Israelis that the international boycott moment called BDS could pick up some support. This moment, which was initiated in 2005, aims at capitalizing international anger with Israel by creating costs to Israel Palestinian policy through (BDS)i.e. boycotting Israeli goods and institutions, divestment from Israeli companies and sanctions on the nation itself. As the Israeli-Palestinian conflict drags on, many Israelis worry that BDS will become more mainstream, it is believed that BDS could end up being a real problem for Israel if it fails to come to terms with Palestinians.
One of the crucial things that have become the cause of Israel’s poor global standing is the west bank because most the countries believe that the continuous Israeli occupation of the west bank is an unlawful military occupation which violate the fourth Geneva convention (reference) which is justified by Israel by stating that it isn’t occupied and even if it were, it doesn’t violate the fourth Geneva convention because it prohibits the forcible population transfers not voluntarily settlement.
Concluding remarks
Mahatma Gandhi, one of the peace-loving politicians that Indian Nation could ever have said “I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary. The evil it does is permanent “ and when we consider this saying with regard to the crises in any part of the world be it Syria , Rohingya, Palestine, Kashmir or any other conflicted area, one common thing that gets reflected on the eye of our mind is that, no matter how long-term the violence maybe, its desired outcome never fructifies simply because violence is violence and the more one tries to illegally suppress a just cause, the more such cause will flourish. Therefore, parties to the conflict should realize this simple principle as soon as possible and should try to recognize each other in a more just and fairway. so far as the Palestine-Israel is concerned , keeping in view the unending devastation and grave violations of basic human rights , it’s high time for both of the parties to say no to violence which is not going to prove fruitful to anyone of them and try to resolve the issue in a more amicable and peaceful manner having regard to the emotions and rights of both the sides, besides it is also vital for the International community to take an unbiased stand and give its contribution towards the just and fair settlement of the dispute . Meanwhile the UN is highly duty-bound to perform the function for which it was created and stop being a mute spectator and hence contribute to Global peace and security.
Reference
www-vox-com.cdn.ampproject.org
En.m.wikipedia.org
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www.history.com
www-vox-com.cdn.ampproject.org
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Colin-McClellan-senior-Honors-thesis-Israeli-Palestinian-conflict.pdf
www.btselem.org
www.reliefweb.in
www.hrw.org/world-report/2020/country-chapters/israel/palestine
www.vox.com/2018/11/20/18080086/israel-palestine-global-opinion#
