Why are Israel and Palestine fighting?
For many years, Palestine was the name of a geographical region located between the Jordan River to the east and the Mediterranean Sea to the west. Those who have called it home are called Palestinians. A Palestinian is an Arab Muslim who is native to the region. The name Palestine may have derived from the word Philistia, referring to the Philistines who occupied the region in the 12th Century BCE. Throughout the ages, Palestine had been ruled by the Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Arabs, Fatimids, Seljuk Turks, Crusaders, Egyptians, Mamelukes and for most the First World War, the Ottoman Empire.
With the Balfour Declaration in 1917, Palestinians had to share their country with an Israeli state which came into effect in 1923 and Palestine became a British Mandate. This meant that Britain had administrative control of the region and had provisions included for establishing a Jewish national homeland in Palestine. The problem didn’t lie with the Jewish people that were there as Palestine had not only Muslims but Jews and Christians but rather the political ideology that developed in some Jewish communities called Zionism (The belief of a Jewish state being capable of existing) which is actually FORBIDDEN in Judaism. Historically, Jews never seeked to establish a state but those that believed in Zionism do seek this idea.
In 1947, the worries of the Palestinians turned into nightmares when the region was divided into two sections which included an Israeli Jewish but Zionist State and an independent Arab state. On 14 May 1948, Israel was created as a result of a previous proposal by the United Nations. The holy city of Jerusalem was claimed as a capital by both Jews and Palestinian Arabs.
Many Palestinian Arabs who had been actively fighting for independence vehemently opposed it while those in support for an Israeli state supported it but not all Jews support the idea of an Israeli state (as said above, Zionism is a no-no in Judaism). Palestinian Arabs argued, stating that they represented the majority of the population in certain regions and they should be granted more territory.
The conflict between Palestinians and Israelis resulted in the 1948 Arab- Israeli War which opened a new chapter between the two which now became a regional contest involving nation-states an a tangle of various interests (namely diplomatic, political and economic). An organisation called the Palestine Liberation Organisation was formed with its purpose of establishing a Palestinian Arab state that was once under the British Mandate but was now occupied by the State of Israel. There have been many conflicts over the years as well as wars. Today, Palestinians are still fighting over the Israeli occupation of Gaza and the West Bank territories. The Israeli government rejected a 50 year old proposal document that proposed the formation of a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital in 2017. To this day, many world leaders are working for a resolution that will see peace throughout the region.