Arab-Israeli Conflict

Arab-Israeli Conflict

The beginning of this seemingly age-old battle began in 1917 when the Balfor Declaration was created. The Balfor Declaration promised that the Zionists would have a permanent home in Palestine. This document caused some commotion because; it conflicted with what other nations were planning to do with the area. Anglo-France planned to divide the near east between themselves and earlier, Britain encouraged the Arabs to fight for their independence of the Ottoman Empire, so the Balfor Declaration was not what many nations were planning on. During the interwar period, the Yishuv, or Palestinian Jewish community, began developing their own press, political parties, labor unions and educational system. The Palestinians felt that the Jews were intruders upon their sacred land and the British tried to mediate their disputes but with no avail. In 1947, the British threw their hands up and turned the problem of the Arabs and the Jews with their land dispute over to the UN. The UN swiftly made the decision to split the territory into two different nations. One of the territories would be Arab and the other would be Jewish. Naturally, the Arabs who now lived in the Jewish State, became refugees and visa-versa, which caused some, displeasure. When the British official withdrew from Israel in 1948, they immediately declared their independence as the new Jewish State of Israel. The United States, through President Truman, was one of the first nations to recognize the existence of the new nation; this was a form of reparation made to the Jewish people because of what happened in World War II. The first Prime Minister of Israel was David Ben-Gurion, a very prominent figure and leader who would do many things for his country until his death in 1973. On the same day that the new state declared their independence, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Jordan and Egypt invaded. The fighting continued to 1949 and by the end of the war, Israel had actually expanded its territory beyond what the united...