Two Peoples, One Land: Was the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Inevitable?

To view the conflict that erupted on October 7, 2023, as a sudden event is to ignore the deep, complex currents of history that have been shaping the Holy Land for over a century. It's a common misconception that the discord between Palestinians and Israelis is an ancient, eternal struggle rooted in antiquity. The reality is more recent and, in many ways, more tragic, born from the dreams and anxieties of the 20th century.

A Land of Quiet Coexistence, A Continent of Rising Nationalism

A little over a hundred years ago, Palestine was a relatively quiet province of the Ottoman Empire. Within its borders, Christians, Muslims, and Jews lived in a state of comparative peace. The conflicts that would come to define the region were not yet a reality.

The catalyst for change was born far away, in Europe. The 19th century was the great age of nationalism, an era when people across the continent began to demand their own sovereign states. This idea resonated deeply with the Jewish people, who were scattered across Europe, primarily in Eastern and Central Europe, without a nation to call their own. Amidst this yearning, and spurred by terrifying waves of pogroms, the idea of Zionism—the return to the historical homeland in Palestine—gained unstoppable momentum. While most Jewish emigrants of that era sought refuge in the United States, a dedicated minority set their sights on the Middle East.

At the turn of the century, tens of thousands of Jewish pioneers arrived in Palestine. They began to purchase large tracts of land, often at high prices from absentee landowners. For the local Arab tenant farmers who had worked this land for generations, the consequences were dire. Displaced and dispossessed, they were forced to seek new homes and livelihoods, sowing the first bitter seeds of conflict between the two communities. At the same time, the spirit of nationalism was also stirring among the Arabs of the Ottoman Empire, who dreamed of their own unified, independent state.

The Tangle of Broken Promises

World War I shattered the old order and intensified these nationalist hopes. Great Britain, seeking any advantage against the Ottoman Empire, entered into a series of contradictory agreements. They offered their support for the creation of a Jewish national home in Palestine. They also promised the Arabs a vast, independent state that would include Palestine. To complete the circle of betrayal, they secretly arranged with France to carve up and divide the very same lands between themselves.

When the war ended, Palestine fell under British control. The flow of Jewish immigrants swelled, escalating clashes with the Arab population over land and labor. The rise of the Nazi regime in Germany unleashed a new, desperate flood of Jewish refugees fleeing Europe for the shores of Palestine. In response to this demographic shift, the Arabs launched a major revolt. Britain found itself trapped between its conflicting promises and the brutal reality of the Holocaust, as a small piece of land absorbed over half a million new arrivals in just a few decades. The disputes and violence intensified beyond control.

A State is Born Amidst the Ashes of War

Realizing it could no longer manage the escalating chaos, Great Britain turned the problem over to the newly formed United Nations. The UN proposed a plan to partition Palestine into two states, one Arab and one Jewish. The proposal, however, was a geographical impossibility, with the borders of the proposed nations resembling a scattered mosaic. Regions with Jewish majorities were allocated to the Arab state, and vice versa.

The Arab world rejected the plan as fundamentally unfair. The Jewish leadership, however, seized the opportunity and proclaimed the independent state of Israel. Immediately, neighboring Arab countries declared war, vowing to destroy the nascent state. They failed. In the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, Israel not only defended its existence but also captured significantly more territory than the UN plan had allotted. In the aftermath, Egypt occupied the Gaza Strip, and Jordan annexed the West Bank.

The war carved deep scars into the landscape and the people. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fled or were expelled from their homes, becoming refugees in neighboring lands. A parallel exodus occurred as Jewish communities that had existed for centuries in Arab countries were persecuted and forced to flee to Israel. The cycle of dispossession and retribution had begun in earnest.

From Regional Wars to Global Crises

The Arab states did not abandon their goal of eliminating Israel. In 1967, the Six-Day War dramatically redrew the map of the Middle East. Israel won a stunning victory, capturing the Gaza Strip and the Sinai Peninsula from Egypt, the West Bank from Jordan, and the Golan Heights from Syria. An occupation of these territories began, and with it, the construction of Israeli settlements, which would become a primary obstacle to any future peace.

The 1973 Yom Kippur War brought the conflict onto the global stage. In protest of U.S. support for Israel, an Arab-led oil embargo sent shockwaves through the world economy. The price of oil and energy skyrocketed, demonstrating how a regional war in the Middle East could trigger a severe international crisis.

A fragile peace was eventually established between Israel and some of its neighbors. Through the Camp David Accords, Egypt formally recognized Israel in exchange for the return of the Sinai Peninsula. This decision was met with fury by many in the Arab world, leading to the assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat by Islamic extremists. The broader Arab-Israeli state-level conflict began to cool, but the core issue was now transforming into a direct Israeli-Palestinian struggle.

The Conflict Turns Inward

The focus of the resistance shifted to the Palestinians themselves. The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), under the leadership of Yasser Arafat, emerged in the 1960s. For decades, it waged an armed struggle, including acts of terrorism, with the stated goal of liberating all of Palestine, which meant the destruction of Israel.

As Israeli settlements expanded across the West Bank, the military occupation became an even harsher daily reality for Palestinians. In the late 1980s, this frustration exploded into the First Intifada, a grassroots uprising against Israeli rule. Years of clashes and brutal reprisals followed, leading to thousands of deaths.

The Intifada eventually gave way to a glimmer of hope with the Oslo Accords in the 1990s. In a historic moment, PLO leader Yasser Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin shook hands on a plan for peace. Yet this hope was fragile. It was shattered when an Israeli extremist, opposed to the peace deal, assassinated Prime Minister Rabin. Violence from both sides continued to sabotage every attempt at reconciliation.

But why do such conflicts arise in society, and how can we analyze them? Conflict theory offers different perspectives. One school of thought, often associated with structural functionalism, suggests that society naturally strives for stability and equilibrium. From this viewpoint, conflict is a dysfunction, a social illness that disrupts the established order and must be resolved to restore harmony. It is seen as an anomaly in a system that should otherwise be balanced. A contrasting school of thought argues that this view is incomplete. It posits that conflict, while not necessarily desirable, is a perfectly natural and inevitable part of social life. It is a fundamental process, an engine for change and the evolution of relationships between groups and states. According to this perspective, conflict is not a sickness to be cured but an inherent feature of the life cycle of any society.

Gaza: An Open-Air Prison and a Terrorist Stronghold

Amidst the turmoil of the Second Intifada in the early 2000s, a new, more radical Palestinian movement, Hamas, consolidated its power in the Gaza Strip. From its inception, Hamas was a violent organization that rejected any compromise with Israel, proclaiming its ultimate goal to be the state's complete destruction and the killing of Jews. It saw the PLO’s peace efforts as a betrayal.

In a move that would define the region's future, Israel made a fateful decision in 2005. It unilaterally withdrew all of its troops and settlers from the Gaza Strip. It then sealed the border, building a massive wall and imposing a strict blockade. The Arabs from Gaza who had worked in Israel lost their jobs overnight.

The consequences were catastrophic. While the wall provided a temporary sense of security for Israel, it left the two million residents of Gaza under the absolute control of Hamas. The terrorist organization deliberately chose not to build a functional economy, instead keeping the population in a state of poverty and dependence. It used its resources to build schools and hospitals, which served as powerful tools for propaganda and indoctrination. An entire generation of Palestinians grew up in Gaza having never met a Jew, their perception shaped solely by Hamas's ideology of hatred. Gaza became a recruitment ground for militants and a launchpad for rocket attacks into Israel, fired from the heart of civilian neighborhoods.

The Shadow of a Regional Power

Hamas does not operate in a vacuum. It is heavily supported by Iran, Israel's chief rival in the region. Iran's leadership considers the destruction of Israel a primary strategic objective. This shared hatred of Israel has forged an unlikely alliance between the Sunni militants of Hamas and the Shiite regime in Iran. Iran also backs Hezbollah, another powerful terrorist group based in Lebanon, which frequently coordinates with Hamas to attack Israel from the north.

This complex web of alliances means that a conflict with Hamas is never just a local affair. It is a proxy war that threatens to ignite a much wider conflagration. The attacks of October 7th were the deadliest manifestation of this reality, an eruption of violence born from decades of occupation, blockade, and radicalization. As Israel responds, the future of the region hangs precariously in the balance. There is no simple solution. There is only the long, sorrowful history and the desperate hope that a cycle of violence that began over a century ago might one day find an end.

References

• Shlaim, Avi. The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World. W. W. Norton & Company, 2014. This book provides a comprehensive and critical history of Israel's relations with the Arab world. It argues that from the beginning, Israel has pursued a policy of negotiating from a position of strength, what the author calls the "iron wall" strategy. It is particularly relevant for understanding the shift from state-level wars to the direct Israeli-Palestinian conflict and details the numerous missed opportunities for peace from the 1950s through the failed Camp David summit in 2000 (see Chapters 5-15).
• Morris, Benny. 1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War. Yale University Press, 2008. This work offers a definitive military and political history of the 1948 war, which the article identifies as the pivotal moment in creating the conflict's modern foundations. It meticulously documents the political decisions and military campaigns from both Arab and Jewish perspectives. It explains how Israel survived and expanded, and details the complex, multi-stage process that led to the Palestinian refugee crisis, challenging simplistic narratives from both sides (particularly the analysis in the chapters "May 15-June 11, 1948" and "The Second Truce").
• Khalidi, Rashid. The Hundred Years' War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917-2017. Metropolitan Books, 2020. This book frames the conflict through a Palestinian lens, arguing that the events of the last century constitute a continuous war against the Palestinian people, beginning with the British Balfour Declaration. It provides essential context for understanding the Palestinian experience of displacement, occupation, and the motivations behind resistance movements like the PLO and the Intifadas. It is especially useful for understanding the failure of the Oslo Accords and the subsequent rise of Hamas as a political and military force in Gaza (see Chapters 5 and 6).