Question

Political Economy Essay: What are the main causes of the conflict between Israel and Palestine?

Whom do you view as the rightful owners of the land in question?

What are the main arguments that are made by each group regarding resolving the conflict?

Answer 1

Israelis and Arabs have been fighting over Gaza on and off, for decades. It's part of the wider Arab Israeli conflict.

After World War II and the Holocast in which six million Jewish people were killed, more Jewish people wanted their own country.

They were given a large part of Palestine, which they considered their traditional home but the Arabs who already lived there and in neighbouring countries felt that was unfair and didn't accept the new country.

In 1948, the two sides went to war. When it ended, Gaza was controlled by Egypt and another area, the West Bank, by Jordan. They contained thousands of Palestinians who fled what was now the new Jewish home, Israel.

But then, in 1967, after another war, Israel occupied these Palestinian areas and Israeli troops stayed there for years. Israelis hoped they might exchange the land they won for Arab countries recognising Israel's right to exist and an end to the fighting.

Israel finally left Gaza in 2005 but soon after, a group called Hamas won elections and took control there. Much of the world calls Hamas a terrorist organisation. It refuses to recognise Israel as a country and wants Palestinians to be able to return to their old home - and will use violence to achieve its aims.

Since then, Israel has held Gaza under a blockade, which means it controls its borders and limits who can get in and out.

The Gaza Strip, the 140 square mile stretch of land located along the Mediterranean coast between Egypt and Israel, has endured decades of protest, military operations and violence as Israel and the Palestinian Authority have both asserted the right to control the area. It is separated by Israel from Jerusalem, which holds deep religious and cultural significance for both Arabs and Jews, with both Israel and Palestinians claiming Jerusalem as a capital city.

In May 2018, tensions erupted once again when the U.S. Embassy relocated to Jerusalem. Perceiving this as signal of American support for Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, Palestinians responded with protests at the Gaza-Israel border, which were met with Israeli force resulting in the deaths of dozens of protesters

Sometimes called “Oslo” after the 1993 Oslo Accords that kicked it off, the peace process is an ongoing American-mediated effort to broker a peace treaty between Israelis and Palestinians. The goal is a “final status agreement,” which would establish a Palestinian state in Gaza and the West Bank in exchange for Palestinians agreeing to permanently end attacks on Israeli targets — a formula often called “land for peace.”

Many people believed the peace process to be over in January 2001. Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat had just rejected his Israeli counterpart Ehud Barak’s peace offer (there’s huge disagreement as to just what that offer entailed). Moreover, renewed talks failed to generate an agreement, and worsening violence during the second intifada violence made another round of talks seem impossible.

Despite the 2001 failure, the general Oslo “land for peace” framework remains the dominant American and international approach to resolving the conflict. The Bush administration pushed its own update on Oslo, called the ”road map,” and the Obama administration made the peace process a significant foreign policy priority. The Trump administration has not formally abandoned this formula, but has yet to take any significant actions to advance it.