The Complicated History of Conflict Between Israel and Palestinians Transcript

Of all the regions in the world, none may have as complicated a history as the Middle East. The center of three religious faiths. The area has been conquered, contested, and ruled by various empires across millennia. John Yang takes a look at the most recent history of conflict and conquest and of suffering and strife that has led the region to where it is today.

From its very founding, the state of Israel has been shaped by modern war and ancient narratives inscribed over thousands of years about who controls the land between the river Jordan and the Mediterranean Sea.

Saudi Arabia. No. Soviet Union, yes. United Kingdom, abstain. United States, yes.

In November 1947, in the aftermath of the Holocaust, the United Nations voted to partition what was then the British mandate of Palestine into two independent states, one Jewish, one Arab. Jerusalem fought over for centuries, was to be under international administration. The city is central to three major religions, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. A small area of the city is one of the most sacred sites for both Jews and Muslims.

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The Western Wall, the remnants of the first and second Jewish temples. And above it Temple Mount, also hallowed ground for Muslims who refer to it as al-Haram al-Sharif, the Noble Sanctuary. In 1948, Israel declared independence, which was followed by the first of what would be many wars between Israel and its Arab neighbors. Hundreds of thousands of Arabs were evicted. An event known in the Arab world as the Nakba, the Catastrophe.

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More than a half million fled to refugee camps in the West Bank, Gaza, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria.

Some were expelled by force, some were terrorized and fled.

Historian Yezid Sayigh was a Palestinian negotiator in peace talks in the 1990s.

These were the people who went from being farmers and peasants to being refugees totally dependent on handouts.

In 1967 with stunning speed, Israel defeated a surprise attack by Egypt, Jordan and Syria in the six-day war. Seizing Gaza from Egypt, the Golan Heights from Syria, and from Jordan, the West Bank and the jewel in the crown of three faiths, East Jerusalem. Thousands of Israelis would move to those territories and settle, violating international laws set by the United Nations. Palestinian resistance groups stepped up terror attacks.

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A tactic backed by the Palestine Liberation Organization or PLO, which started to represent Palestinians on the world stage in the mid 1960s. This included airliner hijackings in the 1972 Munich Olympic Massacre. A terrorist attack that played out on television screens around the world, and ended with the deaths of 11 Israelis, one German police officer and five Palestinian gunmen.

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Then in December 1987, a combination of factors led to largely spontaneous Palestinian protests, civil disobedience, and violent attacks against Israeli soldiers and civilians. It was the first Palestinian Intifada or uprising. The Israeli military responded with brutal force. And out of the first Intifada, emerged Hamas.

When Hamas emerged under Israeli military occupation, the Israeli approach was to tolerate it.

Yossi Alpher is a former Mossad official and the former director of the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University.

It was considered to be strictly religious, not political. That illusion didn’t last long. It was seen as a kind of foil that Israel could manipulate against the PLO.

In 1988, PLO Leader, Yasser Arafat recognized Israel’s right to exist, but Hamas held to its belief that Israel should be eliminated.

They wanted to appear more militant. It is hugely ironic that of course, Israel at that time had an interest in tolerating Hamas, if not actively encouraging it. Until the apprentice turned on the sorcerer, so to speak.

In 1989, Arafat spoke from exile in Tunisia with the late Jim Lehrer.

You can’t imagine how difficult our life are as refugees, as homeless, stateless.

Do you feel that you are close to achieving this, achieving your state?

Yes.

How close? How much time will it take?

Not more than a distance of stone throw.

A distance that for Palestinians proved too far. The Intifada lasted another four years. In all, almost 2000 were killed with Palestinian deaths outnumbering Israeli deaths, three to one. Hope for peace came in 1993 when the PLO and Israel signed the first Oslo Accords. The product of secret talks overseen by the Norwegian government. Both sides committed to negotiating an end to the conflict and charting a path to Palestinian self rule in the West Bank and Gaza.

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It triggered a violent backlash from religious extremists among both Israelis and Palestinians, including Hamas.

I am very sad and very shocked.

And in 1995, a right wing Jewish extremist assassinated Israeli prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin. The next year, Benjamin Netanyahu, an outspoken critic of the Accords and leader of the right wing Likud party was elected Prime Minister.

Netanyahu basically said Oslo is a mistake. This was the position of the settlers, the position of the right wing. Netanyahu very much rode to power, presenting himself as the expert on terrorism.

By 1999, Likud had been defeated and Netanyahu had been replaced as party leader by Ariel Sharon, a former military commander. A year later, Sharon led a march on the Temple Mount to assert Israeli claims to the bitterly contested site. The streets of East Jerusalem and Ramallah in the West Bank erupted in violence. The second Intifada was underway. Five years of Palestinian suicide bombers detonating themselves in Israeli buses and cafes.

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Sharon, by then Prime Minister, ordered Israeli troops into the West Bank in Gaza. The second Intifada’s death toll surpassed 4,300 people. Again, more Palestinians than Israelis.

Rather than immediately clamp down in order to preserve a peace process, Arafat cynically thought that the violence would act as leverage. This is a total misreading of dynamics on the Israeli side, a total strategic mistake.

The second Intifada killed any residual readiness on the part of the Israeli public to back the Oslo process and to continue turning over territories.

Israel began building a security wall between the West Bank and Israel, and renewed expansion of West Bank Jewish settlements. In late 2003, Prime Minister Sharon proposed unilaterally pulling all Israeli troops from Gaza and dismantling the settlements.

It pains me a lot, but I’ve reached a decision and I am going to carry it out.

In August 2005, some 8,000 Israeli settlers abandoned 21 settlements. Israel gave up all governing authority inside Gaza, but continued to control its borders. The next year, Hamas won Gaza’s first legislative elections In a decade. Fatah, the party affiliated with the PLO, placed second. Tensions among Palestinian factions would go from bad to worse. The Hamas leaders in Gaza pressed their hard line toward Israel.

Israel is our enemy who occupied our land and killed our leaders and demolished our homes and jailed our sons and uprooted our trees. We will never be its ally.

Hamas routed Fatah from Gaza in early 2007, putting control of the territories under different governments. Gaza ruled by Hamas. The West Bank governed by the Palestinian authority. Israel imposed a blockade on Gaza, limiting the movement of goods and people in and out. It was in part a response to continued Hamas attacks out of the Gaza Strip. The UN says the blockade has deepened the humanitarian crisis for the more than 2 million Palestinians living there.

You can imagine, socially, politically, personally, ethically what that meant. An immense pool of bitterness and resentment.

For the past 15 years, tensions have simmered between Palestinians and Israelis, occasionally erupting into a full boil. Recurring rocket fire from Gaza into Israel has led to a series of major Israeli air and ground assaults on Gaza. More recently, there’s been friction over Israeli restrictions barring young Muslim men from visiting the Al-Aqsa Mosque on Temple Mount.

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And earlier this month, over Israeli settlers gathering at the mosque were Jewish prayers. And now the newest, most violent chapter is being written in the blood of both peoples.