First Arab-Israeli War

(1948-1949) As soon as the independent state of Israel was proclaimed on 14 May 1948, it was invaded by combined Arab forces and full-scale war broke out, which ended finally with Israeli victory and a series of armistices. Israel retained the western part of Jerusalem, Galilee, and the Negev, and went on to annex territory until it controlled 75% of what had been Palestine under British mandate. The Arab states subsequently imposed an economic boycott on Israel and continued to make raids across the border, which eventually prompted an Israeli attack on the Egyptian garrison in the Gaza Strip in February 1955. The war also produced a flood of Arab refugees from Israel and the war areas.

Second Arab-Israeli War

(29 October-5 November 1956) After Egypt had taken control of the Suez Canal and blockaded the Straits of Tiran, causing the Suez Crisis, Israel, with British and French support, invaded and captured Sinai and the Gaza Strip. Under heavy US pressure, and after the entry of a United Nations (UN) force in 1957, Israel finally withdrew its forces.

Third Arab-Israeli War, the Six-Day War

(5-10 June 1967) In the events leading up to the war of 1967, Egypt (then the United Arab Republic) blockaded the Straits of Tiran, and introduced troops into Sinai. Israel launched a pre-emptive attack on three fronts (against Egypt, Jordan, and Syria) on 5 June 1967 and within six days its armed forces achieved a victory that resulted in the capture of the Golan Heights from Syria; the eastern half of Jerusalem and the West Bank from Jordan; and, in the south, the Gaza Strip and Sinai peninsula as far as the Suez Canal from Egypt. This victory earned only a limited degree of peace, although the occupied territories - which doubled the area under Israel's control - greatly enhanced the Israelis' feelings of security.

Fourth Arab-Israeli War, the October War or Yom Kippur War

(6-24 October 1973) This war was so called because the Israeli forces were taken by surprise on Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement), a Jewish holy day. In recognition of their failures since 1948 Egypt and Syria chose to start the war on the day when the Israelis would be at their most vulnerable, as the whole country effectively shuts down for the 24 hours of Yom Kippur. It started with the crossing of the Suez Canal by Egyptian forces, who made initial gains, though, in the face of Israeli counter-attacks, there was some later loss of ground by the Syrians in the north. The war had 19,000 casualties, and also led to a shift of certain sectors of international opinion against Israel.

Fifth Arab-Israeli War

(6 June 1982-1984) From 1978 the presence of Palestinian guerrillas in Lebanon led to Arab raids on Israel and Israeli retaliation, and on 6 June 1982 Israel launched a full-scale invasion of Lebanon. By 14 June Beirut was encircled, and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and Syrian forces were evacuated (mainly to Syria) 21-31 August. In December 1982 multinational peace-keeping forces were sent in to keep the warring factions in Beirut apart. In February 1984 there was a unilateral withdrawal of the multinational forces. However, Israel maintained a ‘security zone’ in southern Lebanon, and supported the South Lebanese Army militia as a buffer against Palestinian and Hezbollah guerrilla incursions.

Events in the 1990s

In July 1993, following the killing of seven Israeli soldiers in south Lebanon, Israel launched a week-long attack on the area. In July 1994, Israel and Jordan sign a declaration ending the 46-year-old ‘state of war’ between them. In April 1996, after Hezbollah guerrillas fired rockets into northern Israel from south Lebanon, Israel launched a seventeen-day attack on the country, known as the ‘Grapes of Wrath’. In May 2000, Israeli troops were withdrawn from south Lebanon, and were replaced by Lebanese and UN forces. However, negotiations with Syria regarding the Golan Heights failed to reach agreement. Intensive negotiations to push forward the Israel-Palestine peace process, hosted by US president Bill Clinton at Camp David, collapsed at the beginning of 2001.

Background

Palestine is the historic homeland of the Jewish community. From around 1200 BC, the Israelites, an immigrant Semitic group, settled in Palestine (then known as Canaan) and a Jewish kingdom was formed there in the 11th century BC. Its capital Jerusalem was the community's holy city, the site of the Temple of Solomon, which housed the Ark of the Covenant, the focal point of Jewish religious life. The kingdom collapsed in 722 BC, following conquest by the Assyrian king Sargon II, and from 587 BC, after the Babylonians conquered Jerusalem, a diaspora (dispersal) of Jews began. This accelerated after AD 135, when the Romans dissolved the province of Judaea and barred Jews from entering Jerusalem. The dream of a return to the historic homeland nevertheless lived on. It was given clearest expression in The State of the Jews (1896), the seminal tract of Theodor Herzl, father of political Zionism, a movement for the establishment and support of a separate Jewish state. The World Zionist Organization was formed in 1897 and a national flag and anthem (‘Hatiqva’) adopted.

Palestine is also an Arab homeland. As early as the 2nd century BC, Arab tribes began to settle in the area. With the rise of Islam in the 7th century, a distinctive Arab culture developed. This led to the building in Jerusalem - on a stone platform on which the ancient Jewish Temple of Solomon had once stood - of the al-Aqsa mosque on Haram al-Sharif (Temple Mount). One of the three holiest places of Islam, it is from here that Muslims believe Muhammad rode on his magic steed to heaven. For centuries, Arabs in the region were subjected to foreign empires, including that of the Ottoman Turks from 1517 to 1917. However, during the late 19th century, Arab national consciousness reawakened. This occurred at the same time as the organized Zionist movement was developing and there was increasing immigration of Jews into Palestine, with many fleeing persecution in Europe, including pogroms (massacres) in Russia. In 1914 the Arab population in Palestine numbered 650,000, but the number of Jewish colonists had risen to 85,000. Arabs feared that further immigration and a Jewish conquest of Palestine would shatter the territorial unity of the Arab world and weaken their cause.

Arab opposition to an Israeli state mounted after the Balfour Declaration of 1917, which supported the idea of a Jewish national homeland. In the 1920s, with Jewish immigration increasing, there were anti-Jewish riots in Palestine, which was then governed by the UK under a League of Nations mandate. In 1936 an Arab revolt led to the 1937 Peel Report, by a British royal commission, which recommended the partitioning of Palestine into Arab, Jewish, and British regions, the latter to include Jerusalem and the shrines sacred to the three major religions. Palestinian Arabs rejected this formula. In November 1947 the UN approved a plan to partition Palestine into Arab and Jewish states, but again this was rejected by the Arabs. Though the British mandate over Palestine did not end until May 1948 (when Palestinian Jews, supported by UN resolutions, declared the independence of the State of Israel), intermittent fighting broke out between the official Jewish forces and various Arab factions (including the Jordan Arab League) as early as March 1948. The main fighting was for control of the road between Tel Aviv-Yafo and Jerusalem, which the Jewish forces managed to keep open at great cost. The Jewish side also gained complete control in Haifa, Jaffa, Safed, and Tiberias. Some 700,000 Palestinians fled or were driven from Palestine, which a UN-brokered ceasefire left largely under Israeli rule. Jordan took control of the West Bank and Egypt of the Gaza Strip. Thousands of Palestinians were left to live in refugee camps in the neighbouring Arab states.

During the Cold War period, the Arab-Israeli conflict was escalated and given East-West overtones by Soviet adoption of the Arab cause and US support for Israel, with the series of wars serving to increase confusion over who had a claim to what territory. Terrorism was also practised widely, particularly by the PLO, in the period leading up to 1970, when the PLO were suppressed in Jordan by King Hussein. However, international pressure for a settlement of the conflict grew during the 1970s, and in 1978 the US-brokered Camp David Agreements brought peace between Egypt and Israel, though this was denounced by other Arab countries. Israel withdrew from Sinai 1979-82.

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The History of the Conflict in the Middle East

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Conflicts in the Middle East