The Israelis and the Palestinians After the Three Wars

When we left off in 1973… …the Israelis had fought back and stopped Egypt and Syria from taking Israeli land and recreating Palestine following the Yom Kippur surprise attack. Israel still controlled the West bank and Gaza Strip which were populated by Arabs (Palestinians.) Israel also controlled the Golan Heights, taken from Syria in the 1967 Six-Day War, and Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula which was also conquered in 1967.

PLO 1: The Beginning After the 1967 Six-Day War, it became clear to Palestinians that their neighboring Arab countries (Egypt, Syria, Jordan) could not destroy Israel and give them back their land, which had not been under Palestinian rule since Israel was created in the 1940s after World War II... …So the Palestinians formed their own organization that would speak for all Palestinians and work to undo the creation of the Country of Israel. This was the PLO, the Palestine Liberation Organization.

PLO 2: Arafat In the late 1960s, the PLO fell under the leadership of Yassir Arafat. Under Arafat, the PLO became the world’s most feared terrorist group, but by the 1990s Arafat’s PLO renounced terrorism and supported a two-state solution to the Israeli/Palestinian problem.

PLO 3: Terrorism As soon as Arafat took leadership of the PLO, it tried to get both attention to the struggles of the stateless Palestinians, and get the world to stop supporting Israel by killing Israeli civilians and hijacking international flights.

Camp David 1: The Need for Peace Unable to both regain the Sinai Peninsula and Gaza Strip and destroy Israel as promised, Egyptian leader Anwar Sadat decided peace with Israel was the best option—especially as military spending was bankrupting it and it still could not defeat Israel. With US President Jimmy Carter and Israeli leader Menachem Begin, in 1978 the three worked out the following deal, known as the Camp David Peace Accords:…

Camp David 2: The Deal Israel Got To keep the Gaza Strip with a promise of giving Gaza’s Palestinians more control over their own affairs Use of Egypt’s Suez Canal No future attacks by Egypt Egypt Got The Sinai Peninsula A ton of arms and economic aid from the United States

Intifada 1: Changing Tactics Feeling betrayed by Egypt, and still living as stateless refugees in the West Bank and Gaza Strip after 40 years, the Palestinians and the PLO took matters into their own hands, starting the resistance movement called the Intifada in the mid-1980s.

Intifada 2: Whaaaaa? Okay, boycotts of Israeli products, non-cooperation, and graffiti is non-violent and fairly Gandhi-ish, but what is the point of children throwing rocks and Molotov Cocktails (bottles filled with gasoline) at Israeli soldiers with tanks and machine guns?

Intifada 3: The Plan The point of the Intifada was to: Make life miserable for Israelis and show their determination not to comply and willingness to die Get support for their cause out of sympathy as videos of Israeli soldiers shooting young people armed only with rocks were seen across the world.

Intifada 4: The Results Not many, besides about 2,000 dead Palestinians and more than 100 dead israelis, as the world turned its eyes away from the Israeli/Palestinian conflict during the 1991 Gulf War against Iraq. The PLO did the Palestinians no favors when Arafat openly supported his fellow Arab Saddam Hussein in the conflict. This act, along with greater distrust of Arabs at the time, made much of the world less sympathetic to the Palestinian cause.

Oslo 1: A new hope… The 1990s brought a peace-seeking Israeli Prime minister (Yitzhak Rabin), who with the help of President Clinton, worked out a partial peace deal (the 1993 Oslo Peace Accords) with Arafat and the Palestinians. Peace seemed at hand.

Oslo 2: The Deal Israel Got Peace The hope that Israel could remain a single, Jewish- majority country The Palestinians Got Creation of a “Palestinian Authority” that would govern Palestinian-held lands in the West Bank and Gaza Strip Removal of the Israeli Defense Forces from much of the West Bank and Gaza Strip

Oslo 3: Alas… Like Gandhi, Rabin was assassinated by one of his own. A Jewish student angered by Israel “caving in” to the Palestinians fatally shot Rabin at a peace rally on November 4, The peace process ground to a halt.

Second Intifada: Israeli Provocations In 2000, Israel elected Ariel Sharon as Prime Minister. A “hardliner”, he was not going to let the Palestinians get anything if he could help it. Soon after being elected, he provoked the Palestinians by visiting a disputed site, important in both Judaism and Islam. Realizing their dreams of self-rule or independence would not be realized, the Palestinians began the Second Intifada ( ).

Second Intifada 2: More violence The Second Intifada added two new horrors: rocket attacks on Israel from the Gaza Strip, and waves of suicide bombers terrorizing the Israeli population. The Israelis countered with more violence and repression with checkpoints, curfews, and destroying neighborhoods from which rockets were launched.

Second Intifada 3: Hamas Viewing the PLO as weak and ineffective and tired of corruption in the Palestinian Authority, the Palestinian religious group Hamas was voted into power in the Gaza Strip to lead the Palestinian Authority. Committed to a greater commitment to Islamic religious conservatism and willing to use violence, both Israel and the world is unhappy with this development.

The Future With a lull in the violence—especially as Israel has virtually walled itself off from the Palestinians, distrust between the two sides remains very high, and a solution to this 60- year problem seems unlikely in the near future.