A little bit of history...
In 1948, Great Britain withdrew from Palestine, handing over the problem of dividing this territory to the United Nations, which in the same year passed Resolution No. 181 - II, under which two states were to be established in Palestine -
Jewish and Arab, i.e. Palestinian.
According to the UN division, over 50 percent the lands of Palestine were to go to the Jews, although they constituted no more than 33 percent of the local population.
Half a year later, on May 15, 1948, in Tel Aviv, Ben-Gurion read the declaration of independence of the State of Israel, which, however, was not accepted by the Arabs.
The Jews declared independence, but the Palestinians did not.
And since then, the conflict between them has been asymmetric in nature, because it takes place between the state and the nation, which to this day does not have its state representative.
Hamas - Islamic Resistance Movement is a Palestinian organization that was established in 1987 during the intifada, i.e. the Palestinian uprising against the Israeli occupation.
It broke out spontaneously, and the Palestinians, in addition to political demands, demanded improved existential conditions.
Since the late 1980s, the Palestinian political scene has been dominated by two organizations -
the Palestine Liberation Organization, headed by Fatah, and Hamas.
So what makes these two organizations different?
First of all, the PLO or Fatah wants an independent but secular Palestine, while Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad strive to create an independent Islamic state.
In 1993, the PLO and Israel signed the Oslo Agreement, which established the Palestinian Authority and set out a plan for the gradual transfer of territory.
The peace process was implemented until the second half of the 1990s, when it finally collapsed due to violence.
The peace agreement was not recognized by Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which organized a series of terrorist attacks on Israeli territory over several years.
This caused a wave of opposition among Israeli society regarding a peaceful attitude towards the Palestinians.
In 1995, an Israeli fundamentalist killed Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, which turned out to be an additional blow to peace.
In 2000, the second Palestinian uprising broke out - the Al-Aqsa intifada.
The demands of the Palestinians were once again not implemented, and the uprising itself finally ended in 2004 with the death of Yasser Arafat
(the long-time leader of the PLO).
Since 2007, the Palestinian territory has been effectively divided into two parts:
- the West Bank, under the control of Fatah or the PLO,
- and the Gaza Strip, under the full control of Hamas.
It is worth emphasizing that Hamas, like the Lebanese Hezbollah, is not only a military organization, but also a political and social movement.
Hamas manages over 2 million Palestinians, organizes education, the judiciary, ensures water supplies - it exercises full authority, including administrative authority, over the Gaza Strip.
The source of this conflict is the dispute over territory and statehood.
The Palestinians would like to create their own state and regain the territory that was once theirs and which still belongs to them under international law.
This conflict is also about sovereignty, i.e.
the independence of the Palestinians.
Another important problem is the right of refugees to return to the lands from which they were expelled, which is one of their initial assumptions for signing the peace agreement.
In 1948, approximately 750,000 were expelled from Palestinian territory.
Palestinians - today they constitute of 8 million refugees who live in camps both in the Palestinian territories and in neighboring countries, including in Lebanon or Egypt.
In the Gaza Strip itself, ¾ of the population are refugees.
In addition to these three main axes of the conflict, there is also an ethnic and religious dispute between Arabs and Jews, which is often used by fundamentalists on both sides to justify the essence of the dispute and demands.
Over the last 20-30 years, the Palestinian issue has been increasingly treated as Israel's internal matter, which has led to the current, rather critical situation.
Have I missed something?
JMO
