History of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict

The United States and other countries have played a key role in attempting to broker peace, but many obstacles remain, including the issue of Israeli settlements in the West Bank, the status of Jerusalem, and the ultimate fate of Palestinian refugees.

The following day, when most of the settlement's men folk were away, fifty or sixty Arab villagers attacked Petach Tikva, vandalizing houses and fields and carrying off much of the livestock.

After World War I and the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, in April 1920 the Allied Supreme Council meeting at San Remo granted to Britain the mandates for Palestine and Transjordan (the territories that include the area of present-day Israel, Jordan, West Bank and the Gaza Strip), endorsing the terms of the Balfour Declaration.

In some cases, a large acquisition of lands, from absentee landlords, led to the replacement of the fellahin tenant farmers with European Jewish settlers, causing Palestinian Arabs to feel dispossessed.

From 1920, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Haj Mohammad Amin al-Husayni became the leader of the Palestinian Arab movement and played a key role in inciting religious riots against the Jewish population in Palestine.

The 2 main Jewish leaders, Chaim Weizmann and David Ben-Gurion convinced the Zionist Congress to approve continued negotiations with the British even though it rejected the detailed plan.

Reporting in 1938, the Commission rejected the Peel plan primarily on the grounds that it could not be implemented without a massive forced transfer of Arabs (an option that the British government had already ruled out).

[31] With dissent from some of its members, the Commission instead recommended a plan that would leave the Galilee under British mandate, but emphasised serious problems with it that included a lack of financial self-sufficiency of the proposed Arab State.

[31] The British Government accompanied the publication of the Woodhead Report by a statement of policy rejecting partition as impracticable due to "political, administrative and financial difficulties".

[33] As a result, during the 1930s and 1940s the leadership of the Yishuv arranged a couple of illegal immigration waves of Jews to the British Mandate of Palestine (see also Aliyah Bet), which caused even more tensions in the region.

In 1941 during a meeting with Adolf Hitler Amin al-Husayni asked Germany to oppose, as part of the Arab struggle for independence, the establishment of a Jewish national home in Palestine.

[58] Jews from Libya, Iraq, Yemen, Syria, Lebanon and North Africa left due to physical and political insecurity, with the majority being forced to abandon their properties.

The center of PLO activity then shifted to Lebanon, where they established bases to stage attacks on Israel and launch an international terror campaign, largely aimed at abducting airplanes.

Defector Ion Mihai Pacepa claimed that the KGB and Securitate organized trainings on covert bombing and plane hijacking for PLO and published propaganda (such as The Protocols of the Elders of Zion) in Arabic language to further fuel the conflict.

Other notable events include the hijacking of several civilian airliners, the Savoy Hotel attack, the Zion Square explosive refrigerator and the Coastal Road massacre.

Following the wave of terror attacks including the murder on MS Achille Lauro in October 1985, Israel bombed the PLO commandership in Tunis during Operation Wooden Leg.

On September 28, 1995, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and PLO chairman Yasser Arafat signed an interim agreement on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in Washington.

Tensions in Israel, arising from the continuation of terrorism and anger at the loss of territory, led to the assassination of Rabin by Yigal Amir, a right-wing Jewish extremist, on November 4, 1995.

In 1996, increasing Israeli doubts about the peace process led to Benjamin Netanyahu of the Likud Party winning the election, mainly due to his promise to use a more rigid line in the negotiations with the Palestinian Authority.

The lack of progress in the peace process led to new negotiations, which produced the Wye River Memorandum, which detailed the steps to be taken by the Israeli government and Palestinian Authority to implement the earlier Interim Agreement of 1995.

It was signed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and PLO chairman Yasser Arafat, and on November 17, 1998, Israel's 120 member parliament, the Knesset, approved the Wye River Memorandum by a vote of 75–19.

[79] After the failure of the 2000 Camp David Summit, which was expected to reach a final agreement on the Israeli–Palestinian peace process in July 2000,[80] the Second Intifada, a major Palestinian uprising against Israel, erupted.

The outbreaks of violence began in September 2000, after Ariel Sharon, then the Israeli opposition leader, made a provocative visit to the Al-Aqsa compound on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.

As part of this plan all Arab states would normalize their relations with Israel and bring to an end to the Arab–Israeli conflict in exchange for a full Israeli withdrawal from the Golan Heights, the Gaza Strip and West Bank (including East Jerusalem).

[82] Following the severe economic and security situation in Israel, the Likud Party headed by Ariel Sharon won the Israeli elections in January 2003 in an overwhelming victory.

Following the endorsing of the Road Map, the Quartet on the Middle East was established, consisting of representatives from the United States, Russia, EU and UN as an intermediary body of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict.

Continuing violence and Israeli "target killings" of known terrorists[citation needed] forced Abbas to pledge a crackdown in order to uphold the Palestinian Authority's side of the Road map for peace.

During September 2011 the Palestinian Authority led a diplomatic campaign aimed at getting recognition of the State of Palestine within the 1967 borders, with East Jerusalem as its capital, by the Sixty-sixth session of the United Nations General Assembly.

The IDF stated it targeted more than 1,500 military sites in Gaza Strip, including rocket launching pads, smuggling tunnels, command centers, weapons manufacturing, and storage buildings.

[121][122] The military Hamas leader Ahmed Jabari was quoted later as confirming that the prisoners released as part of the deal were collectively responsible for the killing of 569 Israeli civilians.