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Template:Infobox Israeli-Palestinian conflict

The Israeli–Palestinian conflict is an ongoing dispute between Israelis and the Palestinians. It forms part of the wider Arab–Israeli conflict. Though the State of Israel was established in 1948, the term is usually used also in reference to the earlier phases of the same conflict, between Zionist pioneers and the Arab population living in Palestine under Ottoman or British rule.

Many attempts have been made to broker a two-state solution, which would entail the creation of an independent Palestinian state alongside an independent Jewish state (until 1948) or next to the State of Israel (after Israel's establishment in 1948). At present, a considerable majority of both Israelis and Palestinians, according to a number of polls, prefer the two-state solution over any other solution as a means of resolving the conflict. Most Palestinians view the West Bank and Gaza Strip as constituting the area of their future state, which is a view also accepted by most Israelis. A handful of academics advocate a one-state solution, whereby all of Israel, the Gaza Strip, and West Bank would become a bi-national state with equal rights for all. However, there are significant areas of disagreement over the shape of any final agreement and also regarding the level of credibility each side sees in the other in upholding basic commitments.

Within Israeli and Palestinian society, the conflict generates a wide variety of views and opinions. This serves to highlight the deep divisions which exist not only between Israelis and Palestinians, but also amongst themselves.

A hallmark of the conflict has been the level of violence witnessed for virtually its entire duration. Fighting has been conducted by regular armies, paramilitary groups, terror cells and individuals. Casualties have not been restricted to the military, with a large number of fatalities in civilian population on both sides, who took no part in the fighting when they were killed.

There are various prominent and international actors involved in the conflict. The direct negotiating parties are the Israeli government, currently led by Ehud Olmert, and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), currently headed by Mahmoud Abbas. The official negotiations are mediated by an international contingent known as the Quartet on the Middle East (the Quartet) represented by a special envoy that consists of the United States, Russia, the European Union, and the United Nations. The Arab League is another important actor, which has proposed an alternative peace plan. Egypt, a founding member of the Arab League, has historically been a key participant.

Since 2003, the Palestinian side has been fractured by conflict between the two major factions: Fatah, the traditionally dominant party, and its more recent electoral challenger, Hamas. Following Hamas' seizure of power in the Gaza Strip in June 2007, the territory controlled by the Palestinian National Authority (the Palestinian interim government) is split between Fatah in the West Bank, and Hamas in the Gaza Strip. The division of governance between the parties has effectively resulted in the collapse of bipartisan governance of the Palestinian National Authority (PA).

The most recent round of peace negotiations began at Annapolis, Maryland, United States, in November 2007. These talks aimed at having a final resolution by the end of 2008. The parties agree there are six core, or 'final status,' issues which need to be resolved.

The periods of the conflict

On the historical timeline, the Israeli–Palestinian conflict spreads through six periods of time which fundamentally differ from each other:

• The period of the Ottoman Empire rule in Palestine in which the Palestinians saw themselves as part of the overall Arab territories which were under the rule of the Ottoman Empire. During that period, the disputes were on the basis of religious background and not on national background.
• The period of the British Mandate of Palestine, in which both parties were under British rule and under a single political entity - called Palestine in English. During this period the term "The Israeli–Palestinian conflict" was not used and instead the conflict was referred to as "the Jewish-Arab conflict over the Land of Israel" (by the Jewish population), "the Jewish-Arab conflict over Palestine" (by the Arab population and the British population).
• The period of time between the declaration of the State of Israel and the Six-Day War in which the parties resided in three separate political entities: The State of Israel, the Gaza Strip (which was controlled by Egypt) and the West Bank (which was annaxed to Jordan).
• The period of time between the Six-Day War and the Oslo Accords, in which the conflicted parties reside in the area of the western Palestine, which was under the control of the State of Israel.
• The period of time between the Oslo Accords and the Second Intifada, in which Israel exists alongside the semi-sovereign political entity - the Palestinian Authority.
• The period of time between the beginning of the Second Intifada up until today, in which Israel returned to perform arresting operations in Area A zones in the West Bank and Gaza and later on retreated from the Gaza Strip in 2005 which lead to the strengthening of the Hamas which in 2007 took control over the Gaza Strip.

Historical outline

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Template:Details3 The historical outline below is divided into the main six time periods of the conflict which fundamentally differ from each other (see The periods of the conflict).

Late 19th century - 1920

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict stems from competing Jewish and Arab national aspirations for the region, conflicting promises by the British in the forms of the Hussein-McMahon Correspondence and the Balfour Declaration of 1917, and several outbreaks of violence between Jewish and Arab residents of the region of Palestine.

The roots of the conflict can be traced to the late 19th century, with a rise in national movements, including Zionism and Palestinian Arab nationalism. Zionism, the Jewish national movement, was established as a political movement in 1897, largely as a response to anti-Semitism in Russia and Europe. While Arab nationalism, at least in an early form, and Syrian nationalism were the dominant tendencies along with continued loyalty to the Ottoman state, Palestinian politics was marked by a reaction to Zionism. The Zionist movement called for the establishment of a Jewish Nation-State in Palestine (a region known to the Jews by the name of the historical Jewish homeland, Eretz Israel) so that they might find sanctuary and self-determination there. To this end, the World Zionist Organization and the Jewish National Fund encouraged immigration and funded purchase of land, both under Ottoman rule and under British rule, in the region of Palestine. Initially, the trickle of Jewish immigration emerging in the late 19th century met with little opposition from the local population in Palestine. Zionist ambitions were increasingly identified as a threat by Palestinian leaders. Cases of land purchases by halutzim and the eviction of feleheen that followed, aggravated the issue.Ottoman land purchase regulations were brought in after local complaints in opposition to increasing immigration. Ottoman policy makers in the late 19th century were apprehensive of the growing penetration into the region by Russian and the central European powers, through intrusion of émigrés from the Russian Empire who were principally loyal to Russia. The reason being it followed the dismantling of Ottoman authority in the Balkan region. The initial hostility, in the 1880s, to Jewish immigration was on the grounds of them being Russian and European, not as Jews, it was seen as a threat to the cultural make-up of the region. The significance, to the region, of the anti-Jewish riots (pogroms) in Russia in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and anti-immigration legislation being enacted in Europe was that a number of Russian Jews emigrated to Palestine. The Palestinian Arab protests against land purchases (mainly Jewish) led to the Ottoman authorities banning land sales to foreigners (who were principally European Jews of the first aliyah, Jewish immigration to Palestine) in 1892 as the extent of the various Zionist enterprises became apparent. The prohibition against land purchases by foreigners was more stringently adhered to in the Vilâyet of Beirut (covering northern Palestine) whereas in the Muhafazah of Jerusalem the land purchase regulations were not strictly enforced.

Before World War I, the Middle East region, including Palestine, was under the control of the Ottoman Empire about 400 years (apart from when it was under the control of Wali Ali or the French and British). The promise to release the land from the Ottoman Empire, led the Jewish population and the Arab population to support the alignment of the United Kingdom, France, and Russia during the First World War. During the same time, tensions between the Arab population and the small Jewish population (which at that time began to grow significantly due to immigration waves) began to multiply (see First Aliyah and Second Aliyah).

In 1916, the Anglo-French Sykes-Picot Agreement allocated to the British Empire the area of present day Jordan, the area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, and Iraq, while France received Syria and Lebanon.

During World War I, the British made conflicting promises to both the Arab and the Jewish population in Palestine in the forms of the Hussein-McMahon Correspondence and the Balfour Declaration of 1917. The British whom sought Jewish support in the fight against Germany. This and support for Zionism from Prime-Minister Lloyd-George led to foreign minister, Lord Balfour making the Balfour Declaration of 1917, stating that the British Government "view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, but that nothing should be done to prejudice the civil and religious rights of the existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine."

By 1914 the population of Jews in Palestine had risen to 60,000, with around 33,000 of these being recent halutzim. Between 1919 and 1926, 90,000 immigrants arrived in Palestine because of the growth of anti-Semitism, such as in the Ukraine where 100,000 Jews were killed. This notable increase caused Palestinian Arab resentment of British policies on Jewish immigration. Zionist agencies legally purchased land from absentee landlords, such as the Jezreel Valley from the Sursuk family of Beirut, and replaced the fellahin tenants with European halutzim which caused the Palestinian Arabs to feel dispossessed.

1920 - 1948

Following World War I and the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, in 1920 the League of Nations formally assigned the Palestine mandate to the United Kingdom, endorsing the terms of the Balfour Declaration and additionally requiring the creation of an independent Jewish Agency that would administer Jewish affairs in Palestine.

The tensions between Arab and Jewish groups in the region erupted into physical violence as in the 1920 Palestine riots, the 1921 Palestine riots, the 1929 Hebron massacre, and the 1936-1939 Arab revolt in Palestine. The British responded to these outbreaks of violence with the Haycraft Commission of Inquiry, the Shaw Report, the Peel Commission of 1936-1937, and the White Paper of 1939. The Peel Commission proposed partition plan, while the White Paper sought a one-state solution and established a quota for Jewish immigration set by the British in the short-term and by the Arab population in the long-term. Both Arab and Jewish groups directed violence against the British, as in the 1936–1939 Arab revolt in Palestine, the King David Hotel bombing, and the assassination of Lord Moyne in order to expel the Mandatory government, which was held in contempt by both sides.

During 1936-1939, an upsurge of militant Arab nationalism came as Palestinian Arabs of the lower classes felt that they were being marginalized. In addition to non-violent strikes and protests, some resorted to acts of violence targeting British military personnel, Jewish civilians, and other Arabs in the upper classes. The uprising was put down largely by the British forces.

In response, the British government issued a white paper that placed restrictions on Jewish immigration and Jewish land purchases in the remaining land in an attempt to limit the socio-political damage already done. This white paper also noted the need for a Palestine state that could accommodate both Palestinians and Jews without further conflict, yet ruled out the option of partition. Jews alleged that this contradicted the League of Nations Mandate which said: "the administration of Palestine ... shall encourage, in cooperation with the Jewish Agency ... close settlements by Jews on the land, including State lands and waste lands not acquired for public purposes." Jews argued that the British had allotted twice as much land to Arabs as Jews instead of the same amount. Arabs held that the contract was disproportionately in favour of Jewish settlement when the relative size of the two populations at the time was considered.

Ben-Gurion said he wanted to "concentrate the masses of our people in this country and its environs." When he proposed accepting the Peel proposals in 1937, which included a Jewish state in part of Palestine, Ben-Gurion told the twentieth Zionist Congress:

The Jewish state now being offered to us is not the Zionist objective. But it can serve as a decisive stage along the path to greater Zionist implementation. It will consolidate in Palestine, within the shortest possible time, the real Jewish force, which will lead us to our historic goal.

In a discussion in the Jewish Agency he said that he wanted a Jewish-Arab agreement "on the assumption that after we become a strong force, as a result of the creation of the state, we shall abolish partition and expand to the whole of Palestine." In a letter to his son Amos he wrote in 1937 that a Jewish state in part of Palestine was "not the end, but only the beginning." It would give a "powerful boost to our historic efforts to redeem the country in its entirety". He wrote that he had "no doubt that our army will be among the world's outstanding - and so I am certain that we won't be constrained from settling in the rest of the country, either by mutual agreement and understanding with our Arab neighbours, or by some other way."

The Zionist leadership decided to begin an illegal immigration (haa'pala) using small boats operating in secrecy. About 70,000 Jews were brought to Palestine in this way between 1946 and 1947. A similar number were captured at sea by the British and imprisoned in camps on Cyprus.

Details of the Holocaust had a major effect on the situation in Palestine. It propelled large support for the Zionist cause. The violence between Jews and Palestinian Arabs and the heavy cost of World War II led Britain to turn the issue of Palestine over to the United Nations. In November 1947, the U.N. approved the partition of the British Mandate of Palestine into two states: one Jewish and one Arab. The Jewish leadership of the Yishuv accepted the plan. Within the Yishuv some opposition, mainly from small groups of supporters of a binational solution such as the Jewish communist party of Palestine (PKP), and the militant groups Irgun and Lehi, who advocated restoring Eretz Israel, British mandated Palestine, to the Jewish people. . Ben-Gurion argued forcefully for its acceptance because a war was foreseeable, and, 'in the course of the war, the borders will be changed'. The general mood and support for the Partition plan by the Jewish population of Palestine was evidenced by the mass public displays of rejoicing in the streets at announcement of the voting at the UN. The split in the ranks of the Arab High Committee ( which was nothing more than a group of traditional Notables") between rejectionists and pro Partitionists led to Mohammad Amin al-Husayni taking control of the AHC and with the support of the Arab League, rejected the plan, however many Palestinians, principally Nashashibis clan and the Arab Palestinian Communist Party, accepted the plan.

Resolution 181 decided the size of land allotted to each party. The Jewish State would be roughly 5,700 square miles (15,000 km) in size (including the large Negev desert which could not sustain agriculture at that time, but also controlling the fertile coastal areas) and would contain a sizeable Arab minority population. The Arab state would comprise roughly 4,300 square miles (11,000 km) and would contain a tiny Jewish population. Neither state would be contiguous. Jerusalem and Bethlehem were not included and were to be internationalised under the control of the United Nations.The Arab leadership argued that it violated the rights of the majority of the people in Palestine, which at the time was 67% non-Jewish (1,237,000) and 33% Jewish (608,000). Arab leaders also argued a large number of Arabs would be trapped in the Jewish State. Every major Arab leader objected in principle to the right of the Jews to an independent state in Palestine, reflecting the policies of the Arab League.

Ben-Gurion expected a violent reaction to the UN partition plan and so he and his commanders mobilized the Haganah on 30 November 1947. "At the same time," Benny Morris wrote, "IZL and LHI acting independently beginning in early December 1947 reverted to their 1937-1939 strategy of placing bombs in crowded markets and bus stops. The Arabs retaliated exploding bombs of their own."

The violence became more prevalent. Murders, reprisals, and counter-reprisals came fast on each other's heels, resulting in dozens of victims killed on both sides in the process. The sanguinary impasse persisted as no force intervened to put a stop to the escalating cycles of violence. During the first two months of the war, around 1,000 people were killed and 2,000 people injured. By the end of March, the figure had risen to 2,000 dead and 4,000 wounded. These figures correspond to an average of more than 100 deaths and 200 casualties per week in a population of 2,000,000. The Yishuv gained the upper hand in the later stages of inter-communal fighting where "Jewish forces exceeded the UN-proposed boundaries for the Jewish state, which were militarily indefensible .... Part of Palestine had now become Israel, while the area to be known as the West Bank ... was annexed by Jordan ..., and what became the Gaza Strip ... remained militarily governed by Egypt."

On May 14 1948, the day the British Mandate expired, David Ben-Gurion declared the establishment of the State of Israel. The declaration of the State referred to the United Nations General Assembly Resolution 181 as a legal justification for the establishment of the Jewish state in parts of what was known as the British Mandate for Palestine.

1948 - 1967

The termination of the British mandate over Palestine and the Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel sparked a full scale war (1948 Arab–Israeli War) which erupted after May 14, 1948. On 15-16 May, the armies of Jordan, Syria, Egypt and Iraq Palestine. Units from five Arab League countries (Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Iraq) then reluctantly invaded the newly self-declared state precipitating the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. Lebanon's role has been stated differently than actually participating in the invasion. Benny Morris writes "The Lebanese never crossed the border Lebanon may have supplied the Arab Liberation Army, a volunteer force of irregulars, with some logistical and artillery support, but it refrained from taking part in the ‘pan-Arab’ invasion". The Arab league had no intentions of allowing Hajj Amin to control Palestinian affairs. The Arab leadership, which was self-confident over its sure win in the war, led to them calling the Arab population to evacuate many areas to make it easier for the Arab forces to take them over. Many rumors of awful acts which were committed by Jewish fighters as well as a number of serious actions taken by Jewish forces led to a growing number of fleeing Arab population.

The war resulted in an Israeli victory, with Israel annexing territory beyond the partition borders for a proposed Jewish state and into the borders for a proposed Palestinian Arab state. and leaving Jerusalem as a divided city; the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Old City of Jerusalem was taken over by Jordan and the Gaza Strip was taken over by Egypt. The pretext for Jordan entering Palestine was to save the Palestinian Arabs. However the target of Jordan's efforts was for territorial expansion at the expense of Palestinian Arabs and not Israel.

Due to the 1948 Arab–Israeli war, from 1948 until the early 1970s circa 856,000 Jews were were expelled or fled their homes in Arab countries (see Jewish exodus from Arab lands) and most were forced to abandon their property. 260,000 reached Israel in 1948-1951, 600,000 by 1972. The Jews of Egypt were either expelled or left due to physical and political insecurity, mostly after the Lavon Affair. 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. In addition to that, due to the 1948 Arab–Israeli war between 700,000 and 750,000 Palestinian Arabs fled or were expelled from the area that became Israel became what is known today as the Palestinian refugees (see also 1948 Palestinian exodus). The Palestinian refugees were not allowed to return to Israel and most of the neighboring Arab states, with the exception of Transjordan, denied granting them - or their descendants - citizenship. As of today, most of them, and their descendants, still live in refugee camps. The question of how their situation should be resolved remains one of the main issues of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Immediately after the 1948 war, Israel started on a process of nation building with the first general elections held on 25 January 1949. Chaim Weizmann was installed as Israel's first President and Ben-Gurion as head of the Mapai party attained the position he had held in the provisional Government of Israel that of Prime minister of Israel. With the signing of the Armistice agreements the West Bank was exclusively under Jordanian control and the Gaza strip was under Egyptian control. In 1950 the West Bank was unilaterally incorporated into Jordan. After the 1948 war some of the Palestinian refugees who lived in camps in the West Bank within Jordanian controlled territory, and the Gaza Strip Egyptian controlled territory, and Syria tried to return by infiltration into the Israel’s territory, and some of those Palestinians who had remained in Israel were declared infiltrators by Israel and were deported. Ben-Gurion emphatically rejected the return of refugees in the Israeli Cabinet decision of June 1948 reiterated in a letter to the UN of 2 August 1949 containing the Text of a statement made by Moshe Sharett on 1 August 1948 where the basic attitude of the Israeli Government was that a solution must be sought, not through the return of the refugees to Israel, but through the resettlement of the Palestinian Arab refugee population in other states. On the 21 November 1949 the Arab member of the Knesset Mr. Amin Jarjura (Mapai) asked in the Knesset permission for the refugees (6,000) of Nazareth to be allowed to return to their surrounding villages; at the same time the IDF were conducting a sweep through the city of Nazareth rounding up non-residents who the Palestine Post then termed infiltrators. The estimates for 1949 to 156 was that 90% of all infiltration was motivated by social and economic concerns crossing the demarcation lines seeking food or the recovery of property lost in the 1948 war.

While most of the Palestinian Arab population which remained in Israel after the war was granted an Israeli citizenship, Arab Israelis were subject to a martial law up to 1966. Travel permits, curfews, administrative detentions and expulsions were part of life until 1966. A variety of legal measures facilitated the transfer of land abandoned by Arabs to state ownership. These included the Absentee Property Law of 1950 which allowed the state to take control of land belonging to land owners who emigrated to other countries, and the Land Acquisition Law of 1953 which authorized the Ministry of Finance to transfer expropriated land to the state. In 1966 security restrictions placed on Arab citizens of Israel were lifted completely, and the government set about dismantling most of the discriminatory laws, while Palestinian Arab citizens were, theoretically if not always in practice, granted the same rights as Jewish citizens.

In 1954 The Fatah movement was established by members of the Palestinian Diaspora including Yasser Arafat.

The build up of the conflict along the Jordanian border went through a gradual stages. Building up from small Israeli raids with Palestinian counter raids through to the major Israeli incursions, Beit Jalla, Qibya massacre ,Ma'ale Akrabim massacre, Nahalin reprisal raid, Rantis and Falameh reprisal raid. The Lavon Affair led to a deeper distrust of Jews in Egypt, from whose community key agents in the operation had been recruited, and as a result Egypt retaliated against its Jewish community. It was only after Israel's raid on an Egyptian military outpost in Gaza in February 1955, in which 37 Egyptian soldiers were killed that the Egyptian government began to actively sponsored, trained and armed the Palestinian volunteers from Gaza as Fedayeen units which commited raids into Israel.

The Israeli Government position was that the Arab countries were aiding and abetting the infiltrators in an extension of the Arab Israeli conflict by using the infiltrators as guerillas. This was grossly inaccurate.

The problem of establishing and guarding the demarcation line separating the Gaza Strip from the Israeli-held Negev area, proved a vexing one: largely due to the presence of more than 200,000 Palestinian Arab refugees in this Gaza area. The terms of the Armistice Agreement restricted Egypt’s use and deployment of regular armed forces in the Gaza strip. In keeping with this restriction the Egyptian Government’s answer was to form a Palestinian para-military police force. The Palestinian Border police was created in December 1952. The Border police were placed under the command of ‘Abd-al-Man’imi ‘Abd-al-Ra’uf, a former Egyptian air brigade commander, member of the Muslim Brotherhood and member of the Revolutionary Council. 250 Palestinian volunteers started training in March 1953 with further volunteers coming forward for training in May and December 1953. Part of the Border police personnel were attached to the Military Governor’s office and placed under ‘Abd-al-‘Azim al-Saharti to guard public installations in the Gaza strip.

On the Egyptian cease fire line and DMZ to try to avoid future incidents caused by infiltration the Mixed Armistice Commission finally decided that a system of mixed border patrols comprising officers and enlisted men from each side would decrease tension and lessen infiltration. Initially The mixed patrols along the Egyptian demarcation line worked satisfactorily. The Egyptian Authorities maintained a policy of "incarcerating" the inhabitants of the Gaza strip until 1955.

A free fire policy was adopted by the IDF. The policy included patrols, ambushes, laying mines, setting booby traps and carrying out periodic search operations in Israeli Arab villages. The "free fire" policy in the period of 1949 to 1956 has been estimated to account for 2,700 to 5,000 Palestinian Arab deaths. According to Meron Benvenisti, New Historians Avi Shlaim, Benny Morris, Ilan Pappé and UN observers, during anti-infiltration operations the Israeli forces sometimes committed atrocities with reports of gang rape, murder and dumping, in the Avara desert without water, of 120 people who were suspected by Israel of infiltration into Israel.

Additionally the IDF carried out operations, mainly, in Jordanian held territory and Egyptian held territory. The early reprisal raids failed to achieve their objectives and managed to increase hatred for Israel amongst the Arab countries and the refugees. The disruptive and destabilising nature of the raids put the western plans for the defence of the Middle East in jeopardy, the western powers then applied pressure on Israeli to desist.

From November 1948 through to the summer of 1949 and the signing of the General Armistice Agreements a further 87 villages were occupied; 36 being emptied by force.

On 17 August 1950 the remaining Palestinian Arab population of Majdal were served with an expulsion order (The Palestinians had been held in a confined area since 1948) and the first group of them were taken on trucks to the Gaza Strip. Majdal was then renamed Ashkelon by the Israelis in an on going process of de-Arabisation of the topography as described by Meron Benvenisti. Egypt accepted the expelled civilian Palestinian Arabs from Majdal on humanitarian grounds as they would otherwise have been exposed to "torture and death". That however did not mean their voluntary movement. Furthermore, testimony of the expelled Arabs and reports of the Mixed Armistice Commission clearly showed that the refugees had been forcibly expelled.

Ilan Pappé reports that the last gun-point expulsion occurred in 1953 where the residents of Umm al-Faraj were driven out and the village destroyed by the IDF. "

Following years of attacks by the Palestinian Fedayeen the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) was founded in 1964. Founded by a meeting of 422 Palestinian national figures in Jerusalem in May 1964 following an earlier decision of the Arab League, its goal was the liberation of Palestine through armed struggle. The original PLO Charter (issued on 28 May 1964) stated that "Palestine with its boundaries that existed at the time of the British mandate is an integral regional unit" and sought to "prohibit... the existence and activity" of Zionism. It also called for a right of return and self-determination for Palestinians.

In 1967, during the Six-Day War, Israel captured, among other territories, the Gaza Strip from Egypt and the West Bank from Jordan (including East Jerusalem). Shortly after Israel seized control over Jerusalem, Israel asserted sovereignty over the entire city of Jerusalem and the Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem were given a permanent resident status in Israel. The status of the city as Israel's capital and the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip created a new set of contentious issues which became one major focus of the conflict.

1967 - 1993

The defeat of the Arab countries in the Six-Day War prompted fractured Palestinian political and militant groups to give up any remaining hope they had placed in pan-Arabism. As a result, the "armed resistance" organizations, headed by the Fatah and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine became prominent. In July 1968 these organizations achieved the majority of the Palestinian National Council votes, and on February 3, 1969 At the Palestinian National Council in Cairo, the leader of the Fatah, Yasser Arafat was elected as the chairman of the PLO. From the start, the organization used armed violence against civilian and military targets in the conflict with Israel.

Initially PLO tried to take over the population of the West Bank but soon they were deported by the IDF forces into Jordan. While in Jordan they began to act against the Jordanian rule (the rate of Palestinians in Jordan was about 70 percentage of the total population, which was mostly consisted of refugees) and from there attacked Israel numerous times, using the infiltration of terrorists and shooting Katyusha rockets. This led retaliation from Israel.

In the late 1960s, tensions between Palestinians and the Jordanian government increased greatly. In September 1970 a military struggle was held between Jordan and the Palestinian armed organizations. King Hussein of Jordan was able to quell the Palestinian revolt. During the armed conflict, tens of thousands of people were killed - the vast majority of which were Palestinians. The Armed Conflict continued until July 1971 with the expulsion of the PLO to Lebanon. A large number of Palestinians immigrated to Lebanon after Black September and joined the hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees whom were already there. The center of PLO activity then shifted to Lebanon, where the 1969 Cairo agreement gave the Palestinians autonomy within the south of the country. The area controlled by the PLO became known by the international press and locals as "Fatahland" and contributed to the 1975-1990 Lebanese Civil War.

PLO took advantage of its control southern Lebanon in order to launch Katyusha rocket attacks at the Galilee villages and execute terror attacks on the northern border. At the beginning of the 1970s the Palestinian terror organizations, headed by PLO and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, waged an international campaign against Israelis, primarily in Europe. In an attempt to publicize the Palestinian cause, frustrated Palestinian guerrilla groups in Lebanon attacked Israeli civilian 'targets' like schools, buses and apartment blocks, with occasional attacks abroad—for example, at embassies or airports—and with the hijacking of airliners. The peak of the Palestinian terrorism wave against Israelis occurred in 1972 and took form in several acts of terrorism which most prominently were the Sabena Flight 572 hijacking, the Lod Airport massacre and the Munich massacre. In the Munich massacre which underwent during the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, 11 members of the Israeli team were taken hostage by Palestinian terrorists. A botched German rescue attempt led to the death of all 11 Israeli athletes and coaches. Five of the terrorists were shot and three survived unharmed. The three surviving Palestinians were released without charge by the German authorities a month later. The Israeli government responded with an assassination campaign against the organizers and a raid on the PLO headquarters in Lebanon. Other notable events include the hijacking of several civilian airliners, the Savoy Hotel attack, the Zion Square explosive refrigerator and the Coastal Road massacre. During the 1970s and the early 1980s, Israel suffered attacks from PLO bases in Lebanon, such as the Avivim school bus massacre in 1970 and the Ma'alot massacre in 1974 in which Palestinians attacked a school in Ma'alot killing twenty-two children.

In 1973 The Syrian and Egyptian armies launched the Yom Kippur War, a well-planned surprise attack against Israel. The Egyptians and Syrians advanced during the first 24–48 hours, after which momentum began to swing in Israel's favor. Eventually a Disengagement of Forces agreement was signed between the parties and a ceasefire took effect which ended the war. The Yom Kippur War paved the way for the Camp David Accords in 1978, which set a precedent for future peace negotiations.

In the mid-1970s many attempts were made by Gush Emunim movement to establish outposts or resettle former Jewish areas in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Initially the Israeli government forcibly disbanded these settlements. However, in the absence of peace talks to determine the future of these and other occupied territories, Israel ceased the enforcement of the original ban on settlement, which led to the founding of the first settlements in these regions.

In July 1976, an Air France plane carrying 260 people was hijacked by Palestinian and German terrorists and flown to Uganda, then ruled by Idi Amin Dada. There, the Germans separated the Jewish passengers from the Non-Jewish passengers, releasing the non-Jews. The hijackers threatened to kill the remaining, 100-odd Jewish passengers (and the French crew who had refused to leave). Despite the distances involved, Rabin ordered a daring rescue operation in which the kidnapped Jews were freed. The success of this operation brought an end to the Palestinians attempts to hijack planes.

The rise of the Likud party to the government in 1977 led to the establishment of a large number of Israeli settlements in the west bank.

On March 11, 1978 a force of nearly a dozen armed Palestinian terrorists landed their boats near a major coastal road in Israel. There they hijacked a bus and sprayed gunfire inside and at passing vehicles, killing thirty-seven civilians. In response, the IDF launched Operation Litani three days later, with the goal of taking control of Southern Lebanon up to the Litani River. The IDF achieved this goal, and the PLO withdrew to the north into Beirut. After Israel withdrew from Lebanon, Fatah forces resumed firing rockets into the Galilee region of Israel. During the years following operation Litani, many diplomatic efforts were made which tried to end the war on the Israeli-Lebanese border, including the effort of Philip Habib, the emissary of Ronald Regan which in the summer of 1981 managed to arrange a lasting cease-fire between Israel and the PLO which lasted about a year.

Israel ended the ceasefire after an assassination attempt on the Israeli Ambassador in the Britain, Shlomo Argov in mid-1982 (which was made by Abu Nidal's organization which was ostracized from the PLO). This led Israel to invade Lebanon in the 1982 Lebanon War on June 6, 1982 with the aim to protect the North of Israel from terrorist attacks. IDF invaded Lebanon and even occupied Beirut. To end the siege, the US and European governments brokered an agreement guaranteeing safe passage for Arafat and Fatah – guarded by a multinational force – to exile in Tunis. During the war, Israeli allies Phalangist Christian Arab militias carried out the bloody Sabra and Shatila Massacre in which 700-3,500 unarmed Palestinians were killed by the Phalangist militias while the Israeli troops surrounded the camps with tanks and checkpoints, monitoring entrances and exits. For its involvement in the Lebanese war and its indirect responsibility for the Sabra and Shatila Massacre, Israel was heavily criticized, including from within. An Israeli Commission of Inquiry found that Israeli military personnel, among them defense minister and future prime minister Ariel Sharon, had several times become aware that a massacre was in progress without taking serious steps to stop it, leading to his resignation as Israel's Defense Minister. In June 1985, Israel withdrew most of its troops from Lebanon, leaving a residual Israeli force and an Israeli-supported militia in southern Lebanon as a "security zone" and buffer against attacks on its northern territory.

Meanwhile, the PLO led an international diplomatic front against Israel in Tunis. 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.

The continuing establishment of the Israeli settlements and continuing Israeli occupation in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, led to the first Palestinian Intifada (uprising) in December 1987 which lasted until the Madrid Conference of 1991, despite Israeli attempts to suppress it. It was a partially spontaneous uprising among Palestinians which spread in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem and which initially included massive riots but by January 1988, it was already under the direction from the PLO headquarters in Tunis which carried out ongoing terrorist attacks targeting Israeli civilians. The riots escalated daily throughout the territories and were especially severe in the Gaza Strip. The Intifada was renowned by its stone-throwing demonstrations by youth against the heavily-armed Israeli Defense Forces. Over the course of the First Intifada, a total 1,551 Palestinians and 422 Israelis were killed. During the intifada, in 1987, Ahmed Yassin co-founded Hamas with Abdel Aziz al-Rantissi. Since then, Hamas has been involved in what it calls "armed resistance" against Israel which includes mainly terrorist acts against Israeli civilian population.

On November 15 1988, a year after the outbreak of the first intifada, the PLO declared the establishment of the Palestinian state in Algiers. The proclaimed "State of Palestine" is not and has never actually been an independent state, as it has never had sovereignty over any territory in history. The declaration is generally interpreted to have recognized Israel within its pre-1967 boundaries and it's right to exist. Following this declaration, the United States and many other countries recognized the proclaimed "State of Palestine" and the PLO.

Prior to the Gulf War in 1990-91, when the Intifada's intensity began to wear down, Arafat supported Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait and opposed the US-led coalition attack on Iraq. Arafat's decision also severed relations with Egypt and many of the oil-producing Arab states that supported the US-led coalition. Many in the US also used Arafat's position as a reason to disregard his claims to being a partner for peace. After the end of hostilities, many Arab states that backed the coalition cut off funds to the PLO and bringing the PLO to the brink of crisis.

In the aftermath of the 1991 Gulf War, the coalition's victory in the Gulf War opened a new opportunity to advance the peace process. The U.S launched a diplomatic initiative in cooperation with Russia which resulted in the in October 1991 the Madrid peace conference was held in Spain. The conference was hosted by the government of Spain and co-sponsored by the USA and the USSR. The Madrid peace conference was an early attempt by the international community to start a peace process through negotiations involving Israel and the Palestinians as well as Arab countries including Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan. The Palestinian team, due to Israeli objections, was initially formally a part of a joint Palestinian-Jordanian delegation and consisted of Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza without open PLO associations.

1993 - 2000

In January 1993, Israeli and Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) negotiators began secret negotiations in Oslo, Norway. On September 9, 1993, Yasser Arafat sent a letter to Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, stating that the PLO officially recognized Israel's right to exist and officially renouncing terrorism. On September 13, Arafat and Rabin signed a Declaration of Principles on the South Lawn of the White House. The declaration was a major conceptual breakthrough achieved outside of the Madrid framework which specifically barred foreign-residing PLO leaders from the negotiation process. After this, a long process of negotiation known as the "Oslo peace process" began.

During the Oslo peace process throughout the 1990s, as both sides obligated to work towards a two-state solution, Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization negotiated, unsuccessfully, and tried to reach to a mutual agreement. During the Oslo peace Process, the PLO was permitted to establish the autonomous Palestinian Authority and associated governing institutions, to run Palestinian affairs in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, with the understanding that it would promote tolerance for Israel within Palestinian society, and acceptance of Israel's right to exist. However there was continual contention over whether actual events and conditions proved that there was greater acceptance of Israel's existence by Palestinian leaders or a commitment by Israel to stop settlement activity in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

In February 1994, a follower of the Kach movement killed 25 Palestinian-Arabs at the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron (Cave of the Patriarchs massacre). As an act of revenge to the Cave of the Patriarchs massacre, in April 1994, Hamas launched suicide bomber attacks targeting Israeli civilian population in many locations throughout Israel, however, once the Hamas started to the use these means it became a regular pattern of action against Israel.

In September 28, 1995, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat signed the Israeli-Palestinian Interim Agreement on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip on in Washington. the agreement marked the conclusion of the first stage of negotiations between Israel and the PLO. The agreement allowed the PLO leadership to relocate to the occupied territories and granted autonomy to the Palestinians with talks to follow regarding final status. In return the Palestinians recognized Israel's right to exist and promised to abstain from use of terror. However the agreement was opposed by Hamas and other Palestinian factions were already committing suicide bomber attacks at Israel.

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

In January 1996 Israel assassinated the chief bombmaker of Hamas, Yahya Ayyash. In reaction to this, Hamas carried out a wave of suicide attacks in Israel. Following these attacks the Palestinian Authority began to act against the Hamas and oppress their activity.

During the Israeli elections which were conducted during the same year, Benjamin Netanyahu of the Likud Party won the election due to his promise to use a more rigid line in the negotiations with the Palestinian Authority. Netanyahu raised many questions about many central premises of the Oslo process. One of his main points was disagreement with the Oslo premise that the negotiations should proceed in stages, meaning that concessions should be made to Palestinians before any resolution was reached on major issues, such as the status of Jerusalem, and the amending of the Palestinian National Charter. In January 1997 Netanyahu signed the Hebron Protocol with the Palestinian Authority, resulting in the redeployment of Israeli forces in Hebron and the turnover of civilian authority in much of the area to the Palestinian Authority.

In 1997, after two deadly suicide attacks in Jerusalem by the Hamas, Israeli secret agents were sent to Jordan to eliminate the political head of the Department of Hamas, Khaled Mashal, using a special poison (See the assassination attempt on Khaled Mashal). Nevertheless, the operation entangled and the secret agents were captured. In return of their release Israel sent over the medicine which saved his life and freed a dozen of Palestinian prisoners including Sheikh Ahmad Yassin. This release and the increase of the security forces of the Palestinian Authority, led to a cease-fire in the suicide attacks until the outbreak of the Second Intifada.

Eventually, the lack of progress of 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 complete the peace process.

As the violence increased with little hope for diplomacy, in July 2000 the Camp David 2000 Summit was held which was aimed at reaching a "final status" agreement. The summit collapsed after Yasser Arafat would not accept a proposal drafted by American and Israeli negotiators. Barak was prepared to offer the entire Gaza Strip, a Palestinian capital in a part of East Jerusalem, 73% of the West Bank (excluding eastern Jerusalem) raising to 90-94% after 10–25 years, and financial reparations for Palestinian refugees for peace. Arafat turned down the offer without making a counter-offer.

2000 - until today

After the signing of the Oslo Accords failed to bring about a Palestinian state, in September 2000 the Second Intifada broke out, which has been taking place until the present day and has been more deadly than the first Intifada.

The failure of the peace process and the eruption of the Second Intifada which included increased Palestinian terror attacks being made against Israeli civilians led much of the Israeli public and political leadership to lose confidence in the Palestinian Authority as a peace partner. Due to an increase in terror attacks during the Second Intifada, mainly carried out by the Hamas against Israeli civilians, Israel increased the selective assassinations, initially aimed at active terrorist fighters and later on aimed at the terrorist leadership as well, including Sheikh Ahmad Yassin. This policy spurred disagreement within Israel and worldwide.

In 2002 at the Beirut Summit the Arab League proposed an alternative political plan aimed at ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict but it was rejected by Israel (mostly because it demand the Palestinian right of return).

In March 2002, in response to a terrorist attack known as the Passover Massacre, Sharon ordered Operation Defensive Shield, a large-scale military operation carried out by the Israel Defense Forces in Palestinian cities in the West Bank. As part of the efforts to fight Palestinian Terrorism, in June 2002, Israel began construction of the West Bank Fence along the Green Line border. Palestinian terror attacks on Israelis subsequently dropped by 90%. However, this barrier became a major issue of contention between the two sides.

In 2003, Prime Minister of Israel Ariel Sharon announced a controversial disengagement plan which aimed to remove the friction areas between Jews and Arabs in a one-sided way as Israel was to remove all of its civilian and military presence in the Gaza Strip, (namely 21 Jewish settlements there, and four in the West Bank), but continue to supervise and guard the external envelope on land excepting a border crossing with Egypt. Israel also maintained exclusive control in the air space of Gaza. The disengagement plan was implemented in 2005.

Following the withdrawal, the Israeli town of Sderot and other Israeli communities near the Gaza strip became subject to constant shelling and mortar bomb attacks from Gaza with only minimal Israeli response.

The strengthening of the Hamas organization amongst the Palestinians, the gradual disintegration of the Palestinian Authority and the Fatah organization, and the Israeli disengagement plan and especially the death of Yasser Arafat led to the policy change of the Hamas movement in early 2005 which started putting greater emphasis to its political characteristics.

In 2006 Palestinian legislative elections Hamas won a majority in the Palestinian Legislative Council, prompting the United States and many European countries to cut off all funds to the Hamas and the Palestinian Authority, insisting that the Hamas must recognize Israel, renounce violence and accept previous peace pacts. Israel refused to negotiate with Hamas, since Hamas never renounced its beliefs that Israel has no right to exist and that the entire State of Israel is an illegal occupation which must be wiped out.

In June 2006 during a well-planned operation, Hamas managed to cross the border from Gaza, attack an Israeli tank, kill two IDF soldiers and kidnap wounded Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit back into the Gaza Strip. Following the incident and in response to numerous rocket firings by Hamas from the Gaza Strip into southern Israel, fighting broke out between Hamas and Israel in the Gaza Strip (see 2006 Israel-Gaza conflict).

In the summer of 2007 a Fatah–Hamas conflict broke out which eventually led Hamas taking control of the Gaza strip which in practice divided the Palestinian Authority into two. Various forces affiliated with Fatah engaged in combat with Hamas, in numerous gun battles. Most Fatah leaders escaped to Egypt and the West Bank, while some were captured and killed. Fatah remained in control of the West Bank, and President Abbas formed a new governing coalition, which some critics of Fatah said subverts the Palestinian Constitution and excludes the majority government of Hamas.

In November 2007 the Annapolis Conference was held. The conference marked the first time a two-state solution was articulated as the mutually agreed-upon outline for addressing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The conference ended with the issuing of a joint statement from all parties.

A fragile six-month truce between Hamas and Israel expired on December 19, 2008. Hamas and Israel could not agree on conditions to extend the truce. Hamas blamed Israel for not lifting the Gaza Strip blockade, and for an Israeli raid on a purported tunnel, crossing the border into the Gaza Strip from Israel on November 4, which it held constituted a serious breach of the truce. Israel accuses Hamas of violating the truce citing the frequent rocket and mortar attacks on Israeli cities.

The Israeli operation began with an intense bombardment of the Gaza Strip, targeting Hamas bases, police training camps, police headquarters and offices. Civilian infrastructure, including mosques, houses, medical facilities and schools, were also attacked. Israel has claimed many of these buildings were used by combatants, and as storage spaces for weapons and rockets. Hamas intensified its rocket and mortar attacks against targets in Israel throughout the conflict, hitting previously untargeted cities such as Beersheba and Ashdod. On January 3, 2009, the Israeli ground invasion began.

The operation resulted in the deaths of more than 1,300 Palestinians. The IDF released a report stating that the vast majority of the dead were Hamas militants. The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights reported that 926 of the 1,417 dead had been civilians and non-combatants.

Prominent events throughout the conflict

• King-Crane Commission 1919
• 1929 Palestine riots
• Shaw Report
• Hope Simpson Report 1930
• 1936–1939 Arab revolt in Palestine
• The Hunting Season 1944
• The approval of the UN Partition Plan according to which Palestine would be divided into two states - a Jewish state and an Arab state (1947)
• 1948 Arab–Israeli War and the establishment of the state of Israel (1948)
• The creation of the Palestinian refugee problem (1948 - 1950)
• The Six-Day War - Israel occupies the territories populated by Palestinians (1967)
• Black September - the deportation of the PLO from Jordan to Lebanon (1970)
• Terror attacks carried out from Lebanon on Israeli targets worldwide (1972 - 1982)
• Camp David Accords (1979)
• 1982 Lebanon War - the deportation of the PLO from Lebanon to Tunis
• First Intifada (1987 - 1991 / 1993)
• Oslo Accords (1993, 1995)
• Israel–Jordan peace treaty (1994)
• Second Intifada (began in 2000)
• Israel's unilateral disengagement plan (2005)
• 2008–2009 Israel–Gaza conflict

Peace process

Oslo Accords (1993)

In 1993, Israeli officials led by Yitzhak Rabin and Palestinian leaders from the Palestine Liberation Organization led by Yasser Arafat strove to find a peaceful solution through what became known as the Oslo peace process. A crucial milestone in this process was Arafat's letter of recognition of Israel's right to exist. In 1993, the Oslo Accords were finalized as a framework for future Israeli-Palestinian relations. The crux of the Oslo agreement was that Israel would gradually cede control of the Palestinian territories over to the Palestinians in exchange for peace. The Oslo process was delicate and progressed in fits and starts, the process took a turning point at the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin and finally came to a close when Arafat and Ehud Barak failed to reach agreement. Robert Malley, special assistant to United States President Bill Clinton for Arab-Israeli Affairs, has confirmed that Barak made no formal written offer to Arafat. Consequently, there are different accounts of the proposals considered. However, the main obstacle to agreement appears to have been the status of Jerusalem.

Camp David Summit (2000)

In July 2000, U.S. President Bill Clinton convened a peace summit between Palestinian President Yasser Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak. Barak reportedly offered the Palestinian leader approximately 95% of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, as well as Palestinian sovereignty over East Jerusalem, and that 69 Jewish settlements (which comprise 85% of the West Bank's Jewish settlers) would be ceded to Israel. He also proposed "temporary Israeli control" indefinitely over another 10% of the West Bank territory—an area including many more Jewish settlements. According to Palestinian sources, the remaining area would be under Palestinian control, yet certain areas would be broken up by Israeli bypass roads and checkpoints. Depending on how the security roads would be configured, these Israeli roads might impede free travel by Palestinians throughout their proposed nation and reduce the ability to absorb Palestinian refugees.

President Arafat rejected this offer. President Clinton reportedly requested that President Arafat make a counter-offer, but he proposed none. No tenable solution was crafted which would satisfy both Israeli and Palestinian demands, even under intense U.S. pressure. Clinton blamed Arafat for the failure of the Camp David Summit. In the months following the summit, Clinton appointed former U.S. Senator George J. Mitchell to lead a fact-finding committee that later published the Mitchell Report aimed at restoring the peace process.

Taba Summit (2001)

The Israeli negotiation team presented a new map at the Taba Summit in Taba, Egypt in January 2001. The proposition removed the "temporarily Israeli controlled" areas, and the Palestinian side accepted this as a basis for further negotiation. However, Prime Minister Ehud Barak did not conduct further negotiations at that time; the talks ended without an agreement. The following month the right-wing Likud party candidate Ariel Sharon was elected as Israeli prime minister in February 2001.

Road Map for Peace

One peace proposal, presented by the Quartet of the European Union, Russia, the United Nations and the United States on September 17, 2002, was the Road Map for Peace. This plan did not attempt to resolve difficult questions such as the fate of Jerusalem or Israeli settlements, but left that to be negotiated in later phases of the process. Israel did not accept the proposal as written but called out 14 "reservations" or changes before they would accept it, which were unacceptable to the current Palestinian government. The proposal never made it beyond the first phase, which called for a halt to Israeli settlement construction and a halt to Israeli and Palestinian violence, none of which was achieved.

Arab Peace Initiative

The Arab Peace Initiative (Arabic: مبادرة السلام العربية) was first proposed by Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia in the Beirut Summit. The peace initiative is a proposed solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict as a whole, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in particular.

The initiative was initially published on March 28, 2002, at the Beirut Summit, and agreed upon again in 2007 in the Riyadh Summit. The peace initiative achieved the unanimous consent of all members of the Arab League, including both the Hamas and Fatah Palestinian factions.

Unlike the Road Map for Peace, it spelled out "final-solution" borders based explicitly on the UN borders established before the 1967 Six-Day War. It offered full normalization of relations with Israel, in exchange for the withdrawal of its forces from all the Occupied Territories, including the Golan Heights, to recognize "an independent Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital" in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, as well as a "just solution" for the Palestinian refugees.

Although the proposal was rejected outright by Israel when it was first proposed in 2002, the Arab League continues to raise it as a possible solution, most recently in 2007, and recent meetings between the Arab League and Israel have been held. According to Haaretz, Arab leaders had threatened in February 2008 to withdraw their proposal unless Israel explicitly expressed an acceptance of the initiative.

Core issues

A variety of concerns have emerged as key issues in seeking a negotiated settlement between the two sides. Since the Oslo Accords, finalized in 1993, the government of Israel and the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) have been officially committed to an eventual two-state solution. There are six core or 'final status' issues which need to be resolved.

Jerusalem

The border of Jerusalem is a particularly delicate issue, with each side asserting claims over this city. The three largest Abrahamic religions—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—include Jerusalem as an important setting for their religious and historical narratives. Israel asserts that the city should not be divided and should remain unified within Israel's political control. Palestinians claim at least the parts of the city which were not part of Israel prior to June 1967. As of 2005, there are more than 719,000 people living in Jerusalem; 465,000 are Jews (mostly living in West Jerusalem) and 232,000 are Muslim (mostly living in East Jerusalem).

The Israeli government, including the Knesset and Supreme Court, is centered in the "new city" of West Jerusalem and has been since Israel's founding in 1948. After Israel captured the Jordanian-controlled East Jerusalem in the Six-Day War, they assumed complete administrative control of East Jerusalem. In 1980, Israel issued a new law stating, "Jerusalem, complete and united, is the capital of Israel."

At the Camp David and Taba Summits in 2000–01, the United States proposed a plan in which the Arab parts of Jerusalem would be given to the proposed Palestinian state while the Jewish parts of Jerusalem were retained by Israel. All archaeological work under the Temple Mount would be jointly controlled by the Israeli and Palestinian governments. Both sides accepted the proposal in principle, but the summits ultimately failed.

Israel has grave concerns regarding the welfare of Jewish holy places under possible Palestinian control. When Jerusalem was under Jordanian control, no Jews were allowed to visit the Western Wall or other Jewish holy places, and the Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives was desecrated. In 2000, a Palestinian mob took over Joseph's Tomb, a shrine considered sacred by both Jews and Muslims, looted and burned the building and turned it into a mosque. There are unauthorized Palestinian excavations for construction on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, which could threaten the stability of the Western Wall. Israel, on the other hand, has seldom blocked access to holy places sacred to other religions. Israeli security agencies routinely monitor and arrest Jewish extremists that plan attacks, resulting in almost no serious incidents for the last twenty years. Moreover, Israel has given almost complete autonomy to the Muslim trust (Waqf) over the Temple Mount.

Israel expresses concern over the security of its residents if neighborhoods of Jerusalem are placed under Palestinian control. Jerusalem has been a prime target for terrorism since 1967. Many Jewish neighborhoods have been fired upon from Arab areas. The proximity of the Arab areas, if these regions were to fall in the boundaries of a Palestinian state, would be so close as to threaten the safety of Jewish residents. Nadav Shragai states this idea in his study for the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, "An Israeli security body that was tasked in March 2000 with examining the possibility of transferring three Arab villages just outside of Jerusalem - Abu Dis, Al Azaria, and a-Ram - to Palestinian security control, assessed at the time that: 'Terrorists will be able to exploit the short distances, sometimes involving no more than crossing a street, to cause damage to people or property. A terrorist will be able to stand on the other side of the road, shoot at an Israeli or throw a bomb, and it may be impossible to do anything about it. The road will constitute the border.' If that is the case for neighborhoods outside of Jerusalem's municipal boundaries, how much more so for Arab neighborhoods within those boundaries.

Palestinians have grave concerns regarding the welfare of Christian and Muslim holy places under Israeli control. They point to the several attacks on the Al-Aqsa Mosque (Masjid al Aqsa) since 1967, including a serious fire in 1969 which destroyed the south wing, and the discovery in 1981 of ancient tunnels under the structure of the mosque which some archaeologists believe have weakened the building structures on the Al Aqsa Mosque.

Some Palestinian advocates have made statements alleging that the tunnels were re-opened with the intent of causing the mosque's collapse. Israel considers these statements to be totally baseless and unfounded, and to be deliberately intended to incite aggression and public disorder, and stated this in a 1996 speech at the UN. The Israeli government claims it treats the Muslim and Christian holy sites with utmost respect.

Palestinian refugees

The number of Palestinians who fled or were expelled from Israel following its creation was estimated at 711,000 in 1949 Because the UN definition of Palestinian refugees includes all the descendants of refugees, the number of refugees now stands at around four million. Most of these people were born outside of Israel, nevertheless they claim Right of Return to Israel. Palestinian negotiators, most notably Yasser Arafat, have so far insisted that refugees have a right to return to the places where they lived before 1948 and 1967, including those within the 1949 Armistice lines, citing the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and UN General Assembly Resolution 194 as evidence.

The Arab Peace Initiative of 2002 declared that it proposed the compromise of a "just resolution" of the refugee problem. Palestinian and international authors have justified the right of return of the Palestinian refugees on several grounds:

• Several authors included in the broader New Historians assert that the Palestinian refugees were chased out or expelled by the actions of the Haganah, Lehi and Irgun.
• The traditional Israeli point of view arguing that Arab leaders encouraged Palestinian Arabs to flee has also been disputed by the New Historians, which instead have shown evidence indicating Arab leaders' will for the Palestinian Arab population to stay put.
• The Israeli Law of Return that grants citizenship to any Jew from anywhere in the world is viewed by some as discrimination towards non-Jews and especially to Palestinians that cannot apply for such citizenship nor return to the territory from which they were displaced or left.
• The strongest legal basis on the issue is UN Resolution 194, adopted in 1948. It states that, "the refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date, and that compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return and for loss of or damage to property which, under principles of international law or in equity, should be made good by the Governments or authorities responsible." UN Resolution 3236 "reaffirms also the inalienable right of the Palestinians to return to their homes and property from which they have been displaced and uprooted, and calls for their return". Resolution 242 from the UN affirms the necessity for "achieving a just settlement of the refugee problem," however, Resolution 242 does not specify that the "just settlement" must or should be in the form of a literal Palestinian right of return.

Many Israelis are open to compromise on the issue, by means such as the monetary reparations and family reunification initiatives offered by Ehud Barak at the Camp David 2000 summit. Others, however, are opposed. The most common arguments given for this opposition are:

• The Israeli government asserts that the Arab refugee problem is largely caused by the refusal of all Arab governments except Jordan to grant citizenship to Palestinian Arabs who reside within those countries' borders. This has produced much of the poverty and economic problems of the refugees, according to MFA documents.
• The Palestinian refugee issue is handled by a separate authority than other refugees, that is, by UNRWA and not the UNHCR. Most of the people recognizing themselves as Palestinian refugees would have otherwise been assimilated into their country of current residency, and would not maintain their refugee state if not for the separate entities.
• Concerning the origin of the Palestinian refugees, the official version of the Israeli government is that during the 1948 War the Arab Higher Committee and the Arab states encouraged Palestinians to flee in order to make it easier to rout the Jewish state or that they did so to escape the fights by fear. The Palestinian narrative is that refugees were expelled and dispossessed by Jewish militias and by the Israeli army, following a plan established even before the war. Historians still debate the causes of the 1948 Palestinian exodus.
• Since none of the 900,000 Jewish refugees who fled anti-Semitic violence in the Arab world was ever compensated or repatriated by their former countries of residence—to no objection on the part of Arab leaders—a precedent has been set whereby it is the responsibility of the nation which accepts the refugees to assimilate them.
• Although Israel accepts the right of the Palestinian Diaspora to return into a new Palestinian state, Israel insists that their return into the current state of Israel would be a great danger for the stability of the Jewish state; an influx of Palestinian refugees would lead to the destruction of the state of Israel.

Israeli settlements in the West Bank

In the years following the Six-Day War, and especially in the 1990s during the peace process, Israel re-established communities destroyed in 1929 and 1948 as well as established numerous new settlements in the West Bank. These settlements are now home to about 350,000 people. Most of the settlements are in the western parts of the West Bank, while others are deep into Palestinian territory, overlooking Palestinian cities. These settlements have been the site of much intercommunal conflict.

The issue of Israeli settlements in the West Bank and, until 2005, the Gaza Strip have been described as an obstacle to a peaceful resolution of the conflict, by the international media; as well as the international political community (including the US, the UK, and the EU). These actors have also called the settlements illegal under international law, furthermore, the International Court of Justice as well as international and Israeli human rights organizations consider the settlements illegal. However Israel disputes this; several scholars and commentators disagree, citing recent historical trends to back up their argument, it has not changed the view of the international community and human rights organizations.

As of 2006, 267,163 Israelis lived within the West Bank and East Jerusalem. The establishment and expansion of these settlements in the West Bank and (at the time) the Gaza Strip have been described as violations of the fourth Geneva Convention by the UN Security Council in several resolutions. The European Union and the General Assembly of the United Nations consider the settlements to be illegal. Proponents of the settlements justify their legality using arguments based upon Article 2 and 49 of the fourth Geneva Convention, as well as UN Security Council Resolution 242. On a practical level, some objections voiced by Palestinians are that settlements divert resources needed by Palestinian towns, such as arable land, water, and other resources; and, that settlements reduce Palestinians' ability to travel freely via local roads, owing to security considerations.

In 2005, Israel's unilateral disengagement plan, a proposal put forward by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, was enacted. All Jewish residents in the Gaza strip were evacuated, and all residential buildings were demolished.

Various mediators and various proposed agreements have shown some degree of openness to Israel retaining some fraction of the settlements which currently exist in the West Bank; this openness is based on a variety of considerations, such as, the desire to find real compromise between Israeli and Palestinian territorial claims, Israel's position that it needs to retain some West Bank land and settlements as a buffer in case of future aggression, and Israel's position that some settlements are legitimate, as they took shape when there was no operative diplomatic arrangement, and thus they did not violate any agreement.

President George Bush has stated that he does not expect Israel to return entirely to the 1949 armistice lines because of "new realities on the ground." One of the main compromise plans put forth by the Clinton Administration would have allowed Israel to keep some settlements in the West Bank, especially those which were in large blocs near the pre-1967 borders of Israel. In return, Palestinians would have received some concessions of land in other parts of the country.

Israeli security concerns

The threat of Qassam rockets fired from the Palestinian Territories into Israel is also of great concern for Israeli defense officials. In 2006—the year following Israel's disengagement from the Gaza Strip—the Israeli government recorded 1,726 such launches, more than four times the total rockets fired in 2005.

International status

In the past, Israel has demanded control over border crossings between the Palestinian territories and Jordan and Egypt, and the right to set the import and export controls, asserting that Israel and the Palestinian territories are a single economic space.

Palestinians insist on contiguous territory which will in turn rupture the existing territorial contiguity of Israel. In the interim agreements reached as part of the Oslo Accords, the Palestinian Authority has received control over cities (Area A) while the surrounding countryside has been placed under Israeli security and Palestinian civil administration (Area B) or complete Israeli control (Area C). Israel has built additional highways to allow Israelis to traverse the area without entering Palestinian cities. The initial areas under Palestinian Authority control are diverse and non-contiguous. The areas have changed over time because of subsequent negotiations, including Oslo II, Wye River and Sharm el-Sheik. According to Palestinians, the separated areas make it impossible to create a viable nation and fails to address Palestinian security needs; Israel has expressed no agreement to withdrawal from some Areas B, resulting in no reduction in the division of the Palestinian areas, and the institution of a safe pass system, without Israeli checkpoints, between these parts. Because of increased Palestinian violence to occupation this plan is in abeyance. The number of checkpoints has increased, resulting in more suicide bombings since the early summer of 2003. Neither side has publicized a proposal for a final map. (Some maps have been leaked. These, purporting to show Israeli proposals, are reputed to come from the Israelis and the Palestinians).

Resource distribution

Palestinians note, as one of their most central concerns, that their society must be given land and resources with enough contiguity to give them a viable society, and that they must therefore not be forced to give up too many resources to Israel, as this may cause economic collapse.

In the Middle East, water is a resource of great political concern. Since Israel receives much of its water from two large aquifers which are sprawled across the Green Line, the use of this water has been contentious in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Since some of the wells used to draw this water lie within the Palestinian Authority areas, there are many who question the legality of using the water for Israeli needs.

But critics of this argument point out that even though Israel withdraws some water from these areas, it also supplies the West Bank with approximately 40 MCM annually, contributing to 77% of Palestinians' water supply in the West Bank, which is to be shared for a population of about 2.3 million.

While Israel's consumption of this water has decreased since it began its occupation of the West Bank, it still consumes the majority of it: in the 1950s, Israel consumed 95% of the water output of the Western Aquifer, and 82% of that produced by the Northeastern Aquifer. Although this water was drawn entirely on Israel's own side of the pre-1967 border, the sources of the water are nevertheless from the shared groundwater basins located under both West Bank and Israel. By 1999, these numbers had declined to 82% and 80%, respectively.

In the treaty of the Oslo II Accord, both sides agreed to maintain "existing quantities of utilization from the resources." In so doing, the Palestinian Authority established unequivocally the legality of Israeli water production in the West Bank. Moreover, Israel obligated itself in this agreement to provide water to supplement Palestinian production, and further agreed to allow additional Palestinian drilling in the Eastern Aquifer. Many Palestinians counter that the Oslo II agreement was intended to be a temporary resolution and that it was not intended to remain in effect more than a decade later. Indeed its name is "The Israeli-Palestinian Interim Agreement."

This agreement also established the right of the Palestinian Authority to explore and drill for natural gas, fuel and petroleum within its territory and territorial waters. It also delineated the major terms of conduct regarding regulations on the parties' facilities.

Other issues

A variety of concerns have become prominent issues between the two sides in regards to ongoing day-to-day interactions, and actions by either side towards the other.

Status of the occupied territories

Occupied Palestinian Territories is the term used by the United Nations to refer to the West Bank and Gaza Strip—territories which Israel conquered from Egypt and Jordan in the 1967 Six-Day War The Israeli government uses the term Disputed Territories, to indicate its position that some territories cannot be called occupied as no nation had clear rights to them and there was no operative diplomatic arrangement when Israel acquired them in June 1967. The area is still referred to as Judea and Samaria by some Israeli groups, based on the historical regional names from ancient times.

In 1980, Israel outright annexed East Jerusalem. The United Nations rejected this annexation on August 20 1980. Israel has never annexed the West Bank or Gaza Strip, and the United Nations has demanded the "ermination of all claims or states of belligerency and respect for and acknowledgement of the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of every State in the area and their right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force" and that Israeli forces withdraw "from territories occupied in the recent conflict" - the meaning and intent of the latter phrase is disputed. See United Nations Security Council Resolution 242#Semantic dispute.

It has been the position of Israel that the most Arab-populated parts of West Bank (without major Jewish settlements), and the entire Gaza Strip must eventually be part of an independent Palestinian State. However, the precise borders of this state are in question. In 2000, for example, Ehud Barak offered Yasser Arafat an opportunity to establish an independent Palestinian State composed of the entire Gaza Strip and 92% of the West Bank. Because of security restrictions, and Barak's opposition to a broad right of return, Arafat refused this proposal.

Some Palestinians claim they are entitled to all of the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and East Jerusalem. Israel says it is justified in not ceding all this land, because of security concerns, and also because the lack of any valid diplomatic agreement at the time means that ownership and boundaries of this land is open for discussion. Palestinians claim any reduction of this claim is a severe deprivation of their rights. In negotiations, they claim that any moves to reduce the boundaries of this land is a hostile move against their key interests. Israel considers this land to be in dispute, and feels the purpose of negotiations is to define what the final borders will be.

Other Palestinian groups, such as Hamas, insist that Palestinians must control not only the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and East Jerusalem, but also all of Israel proper. For this reason, Hamas views the peace process "as religiously forbidden and politically inconceivable".

Mutual recognition

The Oslo peace process was based upon Israel ceding authority to the Palestinians to run their own political and economic affairs. In return, it was agreed that Palestinians would promote peaceful co-existence, renounce violence and promote recognition of Israel among their own people. Despite Yasser Arafat's official renunciation of terrorism and recognition of Israel, some Palestinian groups continue to practice and advocate violence against civilians and do not recognize Israel as a legitimate political entity.

Palestinians state that their ability to spread acceptance of Israel was greatly hampered by Israeli restrictions on Palestinian political freedoms, economic freedoms, civil liberties, and quality of life. Many feel that their own opposition to Israel was justified by Israel's apparent stifling of any genuine Palestinian political and economic development.

It is widely felt among Israelis that Palestinians did not in fact promote acceptance of Israel's right to exist. One of Israel's major reservations in regards to granting Palestinian sovereignty is its concern that there is not genuine public support by Palestinians for co-existence and elimination of terrorism and incitement. Some Palestinian groups, notably Fatah, the political party founded by PLO leaders, claim they are willing to foster co-existence if Palestinians are steadily given more political rights and autonomy. In 2006, Hamas won a majority in the Palestinian Legislative Council, where it remains the majority party. While Hamas has openly stated in the past that it completely opposed Israel's right to exist, and its charter states this, there is evidence that its position may have softened recently. However, Israel contends that Hamas has refused to recognize Israel in any valid way, and that it supported recent rocket attacks on Israel.

Israel cites past concessions—such as Israel’s disengagement from the Gaza Strip in August 2005, which did not lead to a reduction of attacks and rocket fire against Israel—as an example of the Palestinian people not accepting Israel as a state. Palestinian groups and Israeli Human Rights organizations (namely B'Tselem) have pointed out that while the military occupation in Gaza was ended, the Israeli government still retained control of Gaza's airspace, territorial water, and borders, legally making it still under Israeli control. They also point out that mainly thanks to these restrictions, the Palestinian quality of life in the Gaza Strip has not improved since the Israeli withdrawal. Furthermore, given that the Israeli army has run incursions into the Gaza Strip on various occasions, closed off its borders, and placed an embargo on the region, the Gazan economy has since gone into free fall. This has led and continues to result in warnings of the Palestinian population becoming more radicalized unless conditions improve.

Government

The Palestinian Authority is considered corrupt by a wide variety of sources, including some Palestinians. Some Israelis argue that it provides tacit support for extremists via its relationship with Hamas and other Islamic terrorist movements, and that therefore it is unsuitable for governing any putative Palestinian state or (especially according to the right wing of Israeli politics), even negotiating about the character of such a state. Because of that, a number of organizations, including the previously ruling Likud party, declared they would not accept a Palestinian state based on the current PA. (Likud's former leader Ariel Sharon publicly declared that he rejected this position as too radical).

A PA Cabinet minister, Saeb Erekat, declared this indicates that Israel is seeking to maintain its occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. Israel has not recognised a Palestinian state, and has carried out extrajudicial killings of suspects within the West Bank and Gaza whom it claims have planned and led terrorist attacks within Israel. Some international observers have recommended that negotiations proceed anyway, claiming that internal Palestinian reform can be undertaken if negotiations make progress.

Societal attitudes

Societal attitudes in both Israel and Palestine are a source of concern to those promoting dispute resolution. Some Israelis are concerned that key Palestinian leaders have promoted incitement against and overall non-acceptance of Israel, including promotion of violence against Israel. Some Palestinians are concerned that key Israeli leaders have refused to accept the reality of the Palestinian people and have been defended violence against Palestinians.

Gaza blockade

Because of an import-export ban imposed on Gaza in 2007, 95% of Gaza’s industrial operations were suspended. Out of 35,000 people employed by 3,900 factories in June 2005, only 1,750 people remained employed by 195 factories in June 2007. Closures have severely hindered health services in Gaza. During the period October to December 2007, the World Health Organization has confirmed the deaths of 20 patients, including 5 children. Between 2007-2008, 120 people in Gaza died because they were not allowed to access medical treatment.

The Israeli Government's cut in the flow of fuel and electricity to the Gaza Strip has also been called collective punishment of the civilian population, which would be a violation of Israel’s obligations under the laws of war. Starting February 7 2008, the Israeli Government reduced the electricity it sells directly to Gaza. This follows the ruling of Israel’s High Court of Justice’s decision, which held, with respect to the amount of industrial fuel supplied to Gaza, that, “The clarification that we made indicates that the supply of industrial diesel fuel to the Gaza Strip in the winter months of last year was comparable to the amount that the Respondents now undertake to allow into the Gaza Strip. This fact also indicates that the amount is reasonable and sufficient to meet the vital humanitarian needs in the Gaza Strip.” The Jerusalem Post argued that Palestinians had killed two Israelis in the process of delivering fuel to the Nahal Oz fuel depot.

With regard to Israel’s plan, the Court stated that, “calls for a reduction of five percent of the power supply in three of the ten power lines that supply electricity from Israel to the Gaza Strip, to a level of 13.5 megawatts in two of the lines and 12.5 megawatts in the third line, we were convinced that this reduction does not breach the humanitarian obligations imposed on the State of Israel in the framework of the armed conflict being waged between it and the Hamas organization that controls the Gaza Strip. Our conclusion is based, in part, on the affidavit of the Respondents indicating that the relevant Palestinian officials stated that they can reduce the load in the event limitations are placed on the power lines, and that they had used this capability in the past."

During the British Mandate and after 1919, when unrest started to become widespread, the term "collective punishment" was freely used by the British government to refer to measures they took against Arabs when unknown Arabs attacked Jews or Jews when unknown Jews attacked Arabs. In that era, it meant closure of shops, restriction of movement, and taxes or fines levied on towns as punishment. Supporters of Israel have argued that Palestinian violence against Israeli civilians constitutes collective punishment of Palestinians for the actions of their government.

Airspace

The West Bank and Israel form a strip only up to 80 kilometres wide. Israel has insisted on complete Israeli control of the airspace above the West Bank and Gaza as well as that above Israel itself. A Palestinian compromise of joint control over the combined airspace has been rejected by Israel.

Palestinian army

The Israeli Cabinet issued a statement expressing that it does not wish the Palestinians to build up an army capable of offensive operations, considering that the only party against which such an army could be turned in the near future is Israel itself. However, Israel has already allowed for the creation of a Palestinian police that can conduct police operations and also carry out limited-scale warfare. Palestinians have argued that the Israel Defense Forces, a large and modern armed force, poses a direct and pressing threat to the sovereignty of any future Palestinian state, making a defensive force for a Palestinian state a matter of necessity. To this, Israelis claim that signing a treaty while building an army is a show of bad intentions.

Casualties

The Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs for the occupied Palestinian territory (OCHoPT) was established in late 2000 by the United Nations as a response to the deteriorating humanitarian situation in the West Bank and Gaza caused by military incursions and closures (See also: Second Intifada). The office monitors the conflict and presents figures relating to both internal-violence and direct conflict clashes.

All numbers refer to casualties of direct conflict between Israelis and Palestinians including in IDF military operations, artillery shelling, search and arrest campaigns, Barrier demonstrations, targeted killings, settler violence etc. The figures do not include events indirectly related to the conflict such as casualties from unexploded ordnance, etc., or events when the circumstances remain unclear or are in dispute. The figures include all reported casualties of all ages and both genders.

B'Tselem, an Israeli non-governmental organization, also maintains comprehensive statistics on the conflict for both the First Intifada and the Second Intifada.

Figures include both Israeli civilians and security forces and casualties in both the Occupied Territories and Israel.

See also

Diplomacy and treaties

• List of Middle East peace proposals
• One State Solution
• Paris Peace Conference, 1919
• Faisal-Weizmann Agreement (1919)
• 1949 Armistice Agreements
• Camp David Accords (1978)
• Israel-Egypt Peace Treaty (1979)
• Madrid Conference of 1991
• Oslo Accords (1993)
• Israel-Jordan Treaty of Peace (1994)
• Camp David 2000 Summit
• Peace process in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
• Projects working for peace among Israelis and Arabs
• International law and the Arab-Israeli conflict

Geography

• Palestine
• Geography of Israel
• Israeli Settlements

General background and information

• History of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
• Media coverage of the Arab-Israeli conflict

Ideology and ideas

• Jewish state
• Pan-Arabism
• Proposals for a Palestinian state
• Zionism

Elements of the conflict

• Children and minors in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
• Child suicide bombers in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
• Palestinian political violence
• Peace process in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict

Peace organizations in the region

• OneVoice Movement (non-partisan)
• Peace Now (left wing)
• Seeds of Peace (neutral)
• Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions

Documentaries

• At the Green Line
• Death In Gaza
• Occupation 101
• Promises
• Relentless: The Struggle for Peace in the Middle East
• The Land of the Settlers
• ...more films

References

1. A History of Conflict:introduction, BBC
2. "Just another forgotten peace summit." Haaretz.com. By Prof. Ephraim Yaar and Prof. Tamar Hermann. Published 11/12/2007.
   • Moreover, a considerable majority of the Jewish public sees the Palestinians' demand for an independent state as just, and thinks Israel can agree to the establishment of such a state.
3. Poll on Palestinian attitudes - Jerusalem Media and Communications Centre.
4. Kurtzer, Daniel and Scott Lasensky. "Negotiating Arab-Israeli Peace ..." Google Book Search. 30 January 2009.
5. Dershowitz, Alan. The Case for Peace: How the Arab-Israeli Conflict Can Be Resolved. Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2005
6. Israel: The Alternative, The New York Review of Books, Volume 50, Number 16, October 23, 2003
7. Virginia Tilley, The One-State Solution, University of Michigan Press (May 24, 2005), ISBN 0472115138
8. Haaretz.com.
   • The source of the Jewish public's scepticism — and even pessimism — is apparently the widespread belief that a peace agreement based on the "two states for two peoples" formula would not lead the Palestinians to end their conflict with Israel.
9. New Mid-East peace drive launched, BBC News, 28 November 2007
10. • "It is understood that these negotiations shall cover remaining issues, including: Jerusalem, refugees, settlements, security arrangements, borders, relations and cooperation with other neighbors, and other issues of common interest." (Declaration of Principles on Interim Self-Government Arrangements, Article V, Section 3, Oslo, September 13, 1993)
    • "In furtherance of the goal of two states, Israel and Palestine, living side by side in peace and security, we agree to immediately launch good-faith bilateral negotiations in order to conclude a peace treaty, resolving all outstanding issues, including all core issues without exception, as specified in previous agreements." (Joint Understanding Read by President Bush at Annapolis Conference, Annapolis, November 27, 2007)
    • "As President Bush said, Prime Minister Olmert and President Abbas have agreed to an ambitious work plan to negotiate and resolve all outstanding issues, including all core issues, without exception, as specified in previous agreements, by the end of next year. These issues include borders, refugees, security, water, settlements, and Jerusalem." (Condoleezza Rice's Remarks at the Annapolis Conference, November 27, 2007)
11. Gelvin, James L. " Google Books" (accessed 24 March 2009). The Israel-Palestine Conflict:100 Years of War. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-61804-5. p 93
12. ^ 'The Return to Zion', Jewish Virtual Library
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    by Naomi W. Cohen p 13
    • Martin Sicker (2001) The Islamic world in decline: from the Treaty of Karlowitz to the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire Greenwood Publishing Group, ISBN 027596891X p 164
20. Russian Pogroms, Demonstrations, anti-immigration legislation and emigration
    • "The Zionists had no following of any consequence at that time in the Jewish working class movement. The Zionist press had besides accused the revolutionary movement in Russia of being in a way to blame for the pogromist activity of the Russian Government."

    Rudolf Rocker, Colin Ward (2005) The London Years, AK Press, ISBN 1904859224 p 86

    • Arthur Hertzberg (1959) The Zionist Idea: A Historical Analysis and Reader, Doubleday, p 42
    • "Between 1905 and 1914, the years in which more than a million Jews emigrated to the United States, 24,000 made the journey from Russia to Palestine."

    Martin Gilbert (1984) The Jews of hope, Macmillan, ISBN 0333366255 p 79

    • "Only a minority of Jewish leader favoured emigration the issue was debated in the Jewish press for several uyears. An estimated 80 percent of those who emigrated went to the United States; between 1881 and 1890 the number of Russian Jews to enter the United States totalled 135,000 (S. Jospeph. Jewish immigration to the United States from 1881-1910 , p 93) for the Jewish intellectuals who favoured emigration the main issue was: America or Palestine."

    Paul R. Mendes-Flohr, Jehuda Reinharz (1995) The Jew in the modern world: a documentary history Oxford University Press US, ISBN 019507453X p 414

21. Guy Ben-Porat (2006) Global liberalism, local populism: peace and conflict in Israel/Palestine and Northern Ireland University Press, ISBN 0815630697 p 73
22. Neville J. Mandel (1976) The Arabs and Zionism Before World War I, University of California Press, ISBN 0520024664 p 23
23. Unimap Map showing Vilâyets of Bierut, Syria and Mutasarrifiya of Jerusalem 1914
24. "Palestine: Ottoman rule." Britannica Online Encyclopedia. 1 April 2009.
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26. cited in Palestine Papers, 1917-1922, Doreen Ingrams, page 48 from the UK Archive files PRO CAB 27/24.
27. Palestine, Israel and the Arab-Israeli Conflict: A Primer
28. ^ Berry, M. and Philo, G., Israel and Palestine: Conflicting Histories, London: Pluto Press (2006)
29. Cohn-Sherbok, D. and El-Alami, D. (2006), The Palestine-Israeli Conflict, Oxford: One World Publications.
30. Y. Gorny, (1987), 'Zionism and the Arabs, 1882-1948', p. 216
31. Y. Gorny, 1987, 'Zionism and the Arabs, 1882-1948', p. 259
32. Simha Flapan, 'Zionism and the Palestinians', 1979, ISBN 0-85664-499-4, p.265
33. S. Teveth, 1985, 'Ben Gurion and the Palestinian Arabs', p. 188
34. Reich, Bernard (December 2004). A Brief History Of Israel. Checkmark Books. ISBN 978-0816057931.
35. Stereotypes and Prejudice in Conflict, Daniel Bar-Tal & Yona Teichman, p. 106, Cambridge University Press, 2004
36. Judah Leon Magnes (1947) Palestine--divided or united?: The case for a bi-national Palestine before the United Nations "Ihud" Association (Palestine), Agudat Iḥud (Israel) published by Ihud (Union) Assn.
37. Shlaim, Avi (reprint 2004) The Politics of Partition; King Abdullah, the Zionists and Palestine 1921-1951 Oxford University Press ISBN 0-19-829459-x p 101 Menachem Begin asserted, 'the Partition of the Homeland is illegal. It will never be recognised...It will not bind the Jewish people. Jerusalem was and for ever will be our capital. Eretz Israel will be restored to the people of Israel. All of it. And for ever.
38. Netanel Lorech, Events of the War of Independence, Massada Publishing, 1958. pp. 85 Template:He icon
39. Cheryl A.Rubenberg, Israel and the American National Interest: A Critical Examination, University of Illinois Press, 1989 p.29
40. Burkett, Elinor (2008) Golda Meir; The Iron Lady of the Middle East, Gibson Square, ISBN 978-1906142131 p 131
41. HaaretzThe real Nakba By Shlomo Avineri 09 May 2008
42. Morris, Benny. The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited (Cambridge, 2004), p. 588. qtd. by Susser.
43. Quigley, John. "Israel and the Palestinians: An Exchange." The New York Review of Books. 7 March 1991. 17 March 2009.
44. Shlaim, Avi (reprint 2004) The Politics of Partition; King Abdullah, the Zionists and Palestine 1921-1951 Oxford University Press ISBN 0-19-829459-x p 104
45. Morris, Benny, (second edition 2004 third printing 2006) The Birth Of The Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0-521-00967-7 p 23 The divide between the Husseinis and the Opposition had relatively clear geographical as well as familial-clan demarcations, both reflecting and intensifying the regionalism that had characterised Palestinian society and politics for centuries, Husseini strength lay in Jerusalem and its surrounding villages, rural Samaria and Gaza; the Opposition was strong in Hebron, the Galilee, Tiberias and Beisan, Nablus, Jenin and Haifa.
46. Mid east web Report of UNSCOP — 1947
47. Morris, Benny, (second edition 2004 third printing 2006) The Birth Of The Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0-521-00967-7 p 66 Quote At the same time IZL and LHI acting independently beginning in early December...strategy of placing bombs in crowded markets and bus stops. The Arabs retaliated bombs of their own...Unquote
48. Special UN commission (16 April 1948), § II.5
49. Yoav Gelber (2006), p.85
50. ^ "Arab-Israel Conflict." The Continuum Political Encyclopedia of the Middle East. Ed. Avraham Sela. New York: Continuum, 2002. pp. 58-121.
51. Units from 4 Arab League countries enter Palestine
    • Aḥmad Shuqayrī (1966) Liberation, not negotiation Research Center, Palestine Liberation Organization, 1966 p 118
    • Alan Hart (1989) Arafat, a political biography Indiana University Press, ISBN 0253327113 p 89 Alan Hart quoting Yasser Arafat
    • Cyril Glassé (2008) The New Encyclopedia of Islam Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, ISBN 0742562964 p 681
    • Larry Everest (1986) Behind the poison cloud: Union Carbide's Bhopal massacre University of Nevada Press, ISBN 0916650251 p 143
    • Muhammad Khalil (1962) "The Arab States and the Arab League: A Documentary Record Khayats p 69
    • Yitschak Ben Gad (1991) Politics, lies, and videotape: 3,000 questions and answers on the Mideast crisis SP Books, ISBN 1561710156 p 305
    • Morris, Benny, (second edition 2004 third printing 2006) The Birth Of The Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0-521-00967- p 34
    • Did Lebanon enter Palestine?
    • the Maronites absolutely refused, Israeli intelligence reports attributed to Lebanese army units activities conducted by the ALA. The LA's only role was to provide logistics to the ALA which it couldn't manage anyhow; it was too small to contribute; it was, according to as Iraqi officer, incapable of anything but a 'defensive posture. Yoav Gelber's (2006) Palestine 1948
    • The Lebanese army remained passive throughout the campaign in Galilee. It made no attempt to relieve the IDF pressure on either the Syrians or the ALA. The prime reason for this inaction was the Maronites’ unrelenting and strenuous objection to Lebanon’s involvement in the war. Moreover, the Lebanese army was too small for significantly contributing to the Arab war effort. Yoav Gelber's (2006) Palestine 1948 p.167
    • The ALA spread from Galilee into south Lebanon to safeguard its lines of communications. But the Israelis, who had come to the conclusion that it came under the Lebanese army’s command, interpreted that ALA’s deployment as a Lebanese occupation of Galilee. According to this perception, Lebanon’s army was supervising ALA activities, Lebanon had allegedly introduced a civil administration in Galilee, the AlA had forward positions, and the Lebanese army was concentrated behind it as a reserve force. Taking what appeared to Israel to be an “annexation of Galilee” in all seriousness, Eitan alerted Shertok and Sasson in Paris that Riad al-Sulh was merging Galilee with Lebanon. These baseless assumptions also impacted on planning of the next campaign against the ALA. Believing the border had dissipated at the hands of the Lebanese, IDF planners, too, ignored it. Yoav Gelber's (2006) Palestine 1948: p.221
    • One ALA battalion withdrew across the Lebanese border. Lebanon’s army did not intervene and ignored Qawuqji’s appeals for artillery support to cover his troops’ retreat. The Lebanese also made no attempt to defend their own territory against the IDF incursion. Leaflets scattered by the IAF guaranteed the Lebanese army’s immunity, as long as it remained idle, but at the same time warned of grave ramifications should it intervene in combat. Yoav Gelber's (2006) Palestine 1948: p.224
    • After HIRAM a Syrian brigade secure a flank in Lebanon against a possible Israeli thrust via that route to the Golan, and remained there for several months despite Lebanese protests. The IDF presence in south Lebanon was a thorn in the Lebanese government’s side and put pressure on Lebanese leaders to seek an outlet from a war in which the Lebanese army had not taken part but the country had paid a heavy price. Yoav Gelber's (2006) Palestine 1948: p.228
    • Lebanon’s army did not take part in HIRAM’s battles and made no attempt to frustrate the IDF advance. . .After the operation, Lebanese units took up positions to block further Israeli (or other?) advance along the main routes leading to the country’s interior. Yoav Gelber, (2006) Palestine 1948: War, Escape and the Emergence of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, Sussex Academic Press, p.228
    • The armies of Egypt, Syria, Iraq, and Transjordan (The Lebanese never crossed the border)invaded Palestine on 15 May’. Benny Morris, (2003) The Road to Jerusalem: Glubb Pasha, Palestine and the Jews, I.B.Tauris, p.145
    • Lebanon may have supplied the Arab Liberation Army, a volunteer force of irregulars, with some logistical and artillery support, but it refrained from taking part in the ‘pan-Arab’ invasion, whatever its radio stations proclaimed at the time,’
    Benny Morris, (2003) The Road to Jerusalem: Glubb Pasha, Palestine and the Jews, I.B.Tauris. p.241
    • On May 15, Yiftah brigade reported a fierce battle with invading Lebanese troops at Malkiya. These were, however, local combatants and remains of Shishakli’s Yarmuk battalion.’ Yoav Gelber, Palestine 1948: War, Escape and the Emergence of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, Sussex Academic Press, 2006 p.139
    • The final activity in the north of Palestine concentrated on the Israel-Syrian front and the Israeli-ALA front, while the Lebanese Army refrained from action until the end of the war. It was ironic that by the end of the war Israeli forces were standing on the banks of the Litani river, Lebanese territory. Howere they arrived there as a result of their campaigne against the presence of ALA forces in Palestine, and not through their fight against the Lebanese Army. In fact, in August, Israel and Lebanese representatives formed a cease-fire line which was based on the results of operation Dekel. David Tal (2004) War in Palestine, 1948: Strategy and Diplomacy Routledge, ISBN 071465275X p 417
52. ^ Nafez Nazzal (1978) The Palestinian exodus from Galilee, 1948 Institute for Palestine Studies, pp 18 & 36
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77. Jerusalem Post 22 November 1949 p. 3 col 2 and col 4
78. Benny Morris, (1993). "Israel's Border Wars, 1949-1956; Arab Infiltration, Israeli Retaliation and the Countdown to the Suez War"; Oxford Clarendon Press, ISBN 0198292627 pp 49 & 412.
79. "Records show that until the Gaza raid, the Egyptian military authorities had a consistent and firm policy of curbing infiltration...into Israel...and that it was only following the raid that a new policy was put in place, that of organizing the fedayeen units and turning them into an official instrument of warfare against Israel." - Shlaim, p. 128-129.
80. ^ Avi Shlaim (2000) "The Iron Wall; Israel and the Arab World" Penguin Books ISBN 0140288708 p 84
81. UN Doc S/1459 of 20 February 1950 a report on the activities of the Mixed Armistice Commissions
82. Yezid Sayigh (1999) Armed Struggle and the Search for State: The Palestinian National Movement 1949-1993. Oxford University Press ISBN 0198296436 p 61
83. http://domino.un.org/UNISPAL.NSF/9a798adbf322aff38525617b006d88d7/6b189672cac9e58a85256d9f006554b8!OpenDocument
84. ^ Avi Shlaim "The Iron Wall; Israel and the Arab World Penguin Books ISBN 0140288708 p. 83
85. Benny Morris, (1993). "Israel's Border Wars, 1949-1956; Arab Infiltration, Israeli Retaliation and the Countdown to the Suez War"; Oxford Clarendon Press, ISBN 0198292627 pp 412-416.
86. • Benvenisti, Meron (2002) Sacred Landscape; the Buried History of the Holy Land Since 1948 University of California Press ISBN 0-520-23422-7 p 219
    • UN Doc S/PV.630 of 27 October 1953 Report of Major General Vagn Bennike, Chief of Staff of the United Nations Truce Supervision Organization in Palestine to the United Nations Security Council
    • S/1420 19 November 1949 Telegram from Ruhi Abdul Hadi, Minister Foreign Affairs, Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan to UN Secretary General
    • Yearbook of the United Nations 1950
    • Benny Morris (1993) pp 165-170
    • Violent Truce by E H Hutchison A Military Observer Looks at the Arab-Israeli Conflict 1951 1955 pp 30-38
    • Benny Morris, (1993). "Israel's Border Wars, 1949-1956; Arab Infiltration, Israeli Retaliation and the Countdown to the Suez War"; Oxford Clarendon Press, ISBN 0198292627 p. 180 August 1950 Four Israeli policemen rape a Palestinian “infiltrator”, Khadija Bint Suliman Hussein of the West Bank village of Qatana at the Agu Gosh police station where she was being held. She was caught picking fruit in a grove that her family owned. The four policemen were tried by an internal disciplinary board and each sentenced to 18 months in prison.
    • Benny Morris, (1993). "Israel's Border Wars, 1949-1956; Arab Infiltration, Israeli Retaliation and the Countdown to the Suez War"; Oxford Clarendon Press, ISBN 0198292627 p 181. 2 November 1950 Three Palestinian children shot, two fatally by IDF troops near Deir Ayyub in the Latrun salient. According to subsequent Arab legion reports, whose main points were confirmed by UN observers. Ali Muhammad Ali Alyyan (12) his sister Fakhriyeh Muhammad Ali Alyyan (10) and their cousin Khadijeh Abd al Fattah Muhammad Ali (8) all from Yalu village. Had gone to gather fire wood near the demarcation line, some 400 yd (370 m) inside the Jordanian territory. An Israeli patrol came upon them and Khadijeh began to run back to her village. The IDF patrol opened fire and wounded her superficially on the thigh. As the children’s father and uncle rushed to the scene they saw the patrol dragging the brother and sister away to a spot south of Deir Ayyub, in no mans land. The men looked on helplessly from a near by hill. “The two children were stood in a wadi bed and the soldiers opened fire at them. According to both witnesses only one man fired at them with a sten gun but none of the detachment attempted to interfere.
87. "The Ethnic cleansing of Palestine" Ilan Pappé (2006) Oneworld Publications ISBN 9781851684670 p 197
88. Meron Benvenisti 2000
89. Yearbook of the United Nations 1950
90. "The Ethnic cleansing of Palestine" Ilan Pappé (2006) Oneworld Publications ISBN 9781851684670 p. 220
91. Articles 1, 2 and 3 of the Palestinian National Covenant
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101. http://www.nytimes.com/1991/10/22/world/palestinian-says-his-delegation-will-assert-plo-ties-at-talks.html?sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all
102. "A decade ago, a different Palestinian charter was at the center of controversy. The founding covenant of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), like the one written by Hamas, called for Israel's destruction, though the PLO said that it had embraced the concept of a two-state solution since 1988. Ten years later, during President Clinton's visit to Gaza, a PLO body announced it had annulled the paragraphs calling for Israel's demise." Ilene R. Prusher. Will Hamas change course?, Christian Science Monitor, February 01, 2006.
103. Israeli Settlements and Outposts in the West Bank January 2002
104. Camp David Proposals for Final Palestine-Israel Peace Settlement
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118. Yaakov Katz. "A year's intel gathering yields 'alpha hits'". Jerusalem Post. Retrieved December 28, 2008.
119. McCarthy, Rory (January 2, 2009). "Israeli warplanes destroy Gaza houses and mosque as air strikes continue". Guardian. Retrieved 2009-01-05. {{cite news}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
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122. "Israel Confirms Ground Invasion Has Started". MSNBC. 2009-01-03. Retrieved 2009-01-04.
123. BARZAK, IBRAHIM (2009-01-04). "Israeli ground troops invade Gaza to halt rockets". Associated Press. Retrieved 2009-01-04. {{cite news}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
124. Lappin, Yaakov (2009-03-26). "IDF releases Cast Lead casualty numbers". JPost. Retrieved 2009-03-26.
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126. Hussein Agha and Robert Malley, 'Camp David: The Tragedy of Errors', The New York Review of Books, Volume 48, Number 13, August 9, 2001.
127. Selby, 2003, p. 185.
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130. Benny Morris and Ehud Barak, Reply by Hussein Agha and Robert Malley, 'Camp David and After—Continued', The New York Review of Books, Volume 49, Number 11, June 27, 2002.
131. Enderlin, 2003, p. 263-264.
132. Council for Arab-British Understanding
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135. Jerusalem is the holiest site in the world for Judiasm. The two Divine Temples were built on what is called the Temple Mount, the first over three thousand years ago. Archaeological evidence has proven that the Divine Temple of the Jews was built at that time, and the second built a few centuries after its destruction. Jerusalem was the capital city of the Israeli Empire, established right before the construction of the First Temple. For Muslims, Jerusalem is the third holiest (after Meccah and Medina), where Mohamud allegedly tied his horse, el'Baruck, meaning lightning in Arabic. The Al-Aksa Mosque was built on the Temple Mount several centuries ago. Israel controls Jerusalem today. However, Muslims are almost exclusively allowed on the Temple Mount site. Jews are rarely allowed onto the Temple Mount.BBC news in depth
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138. ^ Sela, Avraham. "Jerusalem." The Continuum Political Encyclopedia of the Middle East. Ed. Avraham Sela. New York: Continuum, 2002. pp. 491-498.
139. Gold, Dore. The Fight for Jerusalem: Radical Islam, the West, and the Future of the Holy City. Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing, Inc., 2007. p. 5-6.
140. "JCPA ME Diplomacy-Jerusalem: The Dangers of Division". www.jcpa.org. October 2008. Retrieved 2009-01-05.
141. "In general, Israeli policy towards holy places can be considered a success with regard to its primary goal: facilitating Israel’s acceptance into the international community of nations. However, the repeated failure of the Muslim Affairs Department to fulfill its mandate of protecting the Muslim holy places in Israel has been a largely forgotten chapter in Israeli history that deserves reexamination". Alisa Rubin Peled, Debating Islam in the Jewish State: The Development of Policy Toward Islamic Institutions in Israel, State University of New York Press, 2001 p.96
142. Secret tunnel under Al-Aqsa Mosque exposed
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144. FM Levy- Address to the UN Security Council, Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Sept 27, 1996.
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149. McGeown, Kate and Martin Asser. "Right of return: Palestinian dream?" BBC News. 18 February 2003. 15 July 2007.
150. Flapan, Simha (1987):The Palestinian Exodus of 1948. Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 16, No. 4. (Summer, 1987), pp. 3-26.
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152. Interview to Avi Shlaim in Haaretz's supplement
153. See for example, Masalha, Nur-eldeen (1988):On Recent Hebrew and Israeli Sources for the Palestinian Exodus, 1947-49. Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 18, No. 1, Special Issue: Palestine 1948. (Autumn, 1988), pp. 121-137. and Childers, Irskine (1961): The Other Exodus. The Spectator (London), May 12, 1961.
154. Al-Awda web site on points of unity
155. Edward Said cited on the issue of the palestinian right of return and israeli Law of Return in www.samsonblinded.org
156. The Arab Association of Human Rights criticises the israeli Law of Return as being discriminatory towards arabs in www.arabhra.org
157. Jonathan Cook considers the support for the Israeli Law of Return together with the opposition towards Palestinian Right of Return as a way that "maintains the act of ethnic cleansing that dispossessed the Palestinian refugees more than half a century ago."
158. Global Policy Forum on Palestinians' right of return
159. Radley, K.René (1978): The Palestinian Refugees: The Right to Return in International Law. The American Journal of International Law, Vol. 72, No. 3 (Jul., 1978), pp. 586-614.
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     "The PLO's agreement to support the participation of a Palestinian delegation from the West Bank and Gaza Strip in the Madrid Peace Conferences in late October 1991 further fueled the tension between Fatah and Hamas, which embarked on an intensive campaign against the very idea of territorial compromise and peacemaking with the Jews, as religiously forbidden and politically inconceivable" (339).

210. Details of the Oslo Accords
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232. Data tabulated from B'Tselem Statistics, Fatalities, Note that the data may change due to ongoing research, which produces new information about the events.
233. Data tabulated from B'Tselem - Statistics - Fatalities in the first Intifada

Further reading

External links

Academic, news, and similar sites (excluding Israeli or Palestinian sources)

• Gaza\Sderot : Life in spite of everything - a webdocumentary produced by arte.tv, in which daily video-chronicles (2 min. each) show the life of 5 people (men, women, children) in Gaza and Sderot, on both sides of the border.
• Israeli-Palestinian ProCon.org Pros and Cons of hundreds of issues related to the conflict.
• Global Politician - Middle-East Section
• Middle East Policy Council
• The Washington Institute for Near East Policy
• Aix Group - Joint Palestinian-Israeli-international economic working group.
• The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict--An overview of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians from 1948 through the present day. From the History Guy Website.
• The Media Line - A non-profit news agency which provides credible, unbiased content, background and context from across the Middle East.
• Inter Press Service - Israel-Palestine: Holy Land, Unholy War Independent coverage of the Middle East conflicts
• Should there be an independent Palestinian state? - See the 2008 presidential candidates' views on this question

Conflict resolution groups

• OneVoice Movement - One Million Voices to End the Conflict
• Seeking Common Ground

Human rights groups

• Human Rights Watch: Israel/Palestine
• B'Tselem - The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories
• Al-Haq: Palestinian Human Rights Group: West Bank affiliate of the International Commission of Jurists
• Palestinian Centre for Human Rights: Gaza affiliate of the International Commission of Jurists

Jewish and Israeli academic, news, and similar sites

• Resources >Modern Period>20th Cent.>History of Israel>State of Israel The Jewish History Resource Center, Project of the Dinur Center for Research in Jewish History, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
• MidEastWeb.org
  • A Timeline of Israeli-Palestinian history and the conflict
  • A history of Israel, Palestine and the Arab-Israeli Conflict
• Current breakdown of fatalities in conflict - Institute for Counter-Terrorism
• Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs

Pro-Israel advocacy and watchdog sites

• Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs Palestinian Violence and Terrorism
• Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America
• Palestine Facts
• Eretz Yisroel: A comprehensive collection of news, articles and book excerpts
• Jewish Virtual Library
  • Palestinian Maps Omitting Israel and Maps of "Palestine" as a means to instill fundamentally negative messages regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
  • Myths and facts online: a guide to the Arab-Israeli Conflict
• Honest Reporting monitoring mideast media
• Gamla shall not fall again
• True Peace - Chabad-Lubavitch site

Pro-Palestinian advocacy and watchdog sites

• Palestine Solidarity Campaign UK
• Palestinian Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign
• Palestinian Campaign for the Cultural and Academic Boycott of Israel
• Palestine Media Watch
• Electronic Intifada
• Palestine Solidarity Project Palestinian grassroots organizing and reporting.

Jewish and Israeli "peace movement" news and advocacy sites

• "Barak's Generous offer" from Gush Shalom. Macromedia Flash version
• The Origin of the Palestine - Israel Conflict, Published by Jews for Justice in the Middle East
• Background to the Israel-Palestine Crisis--Q & A format overview by Stephen Shalom, who teaches political science at William Paterson University in New Jersey.

Other sites:

• Arabs and Israelis held hostage by a common enemy Salom Now! And METalks are two experimental initiatives which sought to rewrite the script of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. However, such popular, grassroots action is held hostage by some common enemies: despair, hatred, antipathy and distrust. (Jan, 2007)
• Exchange of friendly fire Anat el-Hashahar, an Israeli and founder of METalks, debates the Arab-Israeli conflict – from Oslo to Lebanon – with Khaled Diab, an Egyptian journalist and writer.
• Website with information (articles, reports, maps, books, links, etc.) on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict

Peace proposals

• A Comparison Of Three Drafts For An Israeli-Palestinian Peace Agreement

• Articles with dead external links from February 2009
• Articles with dead external links from January 2009
• Misplaced Pages neutral point of view disputes from March 2009
• Articles that may be too long from March 2009
• Israeli-Palestinian conflict
• Nationalism
• Palestinian terrorism
• Zionist terrorism
• Zionism