On your KWL charts, many of you recorded that you “know” that the Middle East has a high population of Muslims (people who practice the religion Islam). Yet Judaism, Christianity and Islam all emerged in the Middle East! In fact, after World War Two a conflict involving Jews was the MAJOR political event in the Middle East! What I KnowWhat I Want to Know What I Learned

After WW One – this area had become the British mandate of Palestine.

Conflict Over Palestine (pg. 889) Since Roman times, Jews had dreamed of returning to Palestine, a land which Jews called Israel. During WW One, the Allies made vague promises supporting the idea of setting up “a national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine. Yet non-Jewish communities already existed in Palestine. Those communities were Arabs. Although most Arabs were Muslim, some were Christian.

Both Jews & Palestinian Arabs claimed a historical right to this land. The Middle East

Jewish migration to Palestine, which began in the late 1800s, increased after WW Two. This created tension between the Jews and Palestinian Arabs. After Jews and Palestinian Arabs wanted individual nations and both felt they had claim to Palestine. In the U.S., the horrors of the Holocaust created strong support for a Jewish homeland.

Britain withdrew in 1948 and the U.N. proposed that the country be partitioned 50/50. The United Nations drew up a plan to separate Palestine into an Arab and a Jewish state. Plan for Palestinian Land Plan for Jewish Land

Arab-Israeli Conflict After the Holocaust, many Jews believed that they should have a homeland of their own. They concentrated on the biblical area of Israel…. Jerusalem. Israel includes holy places for the Jewish religion and is surrounded by Muslim countries. The United Nations agreed that the Jewish people of the world should be given land so they could live together in peace. Yet at that time, Palestinian Muslims lived on the land that the United Nations gave to the Jewish people. The Palestinians and neighboring Arabic nations did not accept the creation of Israel.

War broke out when the Jews, certain of U.S. and Soviet support, declared their independence and the creation of Israel in (Remember this was when the superpowers were trying to secure Middle Eastern nations as their new allies.) Arab states launched a military attack on the new nation. Hoping to annihilate the new Jewish state, the armies of Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and Iraq invaded... thus starting the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. WAR BREAKS OUT!!!

fighting ended, Israelis conquered more territory than the U.N. plan initially stated, and the rest of the territory fell to Egypt and Jordan, rather than forming an independent Palestinian state. The Arab-Israeli War of 1948 uprooted 700,000 Arabs from Palestine. Refugees fled to Lebanon, the West Bank, and the Gaza strip. The UN set up temporary shelters for the Palestinian refugees which have since become permanent homes. Generations of Palestinian refugees have grown up determined to win a homeland of their own. The Birth of Israel (pg. 889)

The Refugee Issue (pg. 890)