Israeli–Palestinian conflict
| Israeli–Palestinian conflict | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Part of the Arab–Israeli conflict | |||||||||
 Map of the Palestine region, as of 2011 showing zones of control as outlined by the Oslo Accords[citation needed] | |||||||||
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| Belligerents | |||||||||
 Israel |  State of Palestine
Governance (PNA):  Fatah (West Bank) Hamas (Gaza Strip) | ||||||||
Supported by: Former support: | Supported by: Former support: | ||||||||
| Casualties and losses | |||||||||
| 21,500+ casualties (1965–2013)[8] | |||||||||
The Israeli–Palestinian conflict is an ongoing military and political conflict in the Levant. Beginning in the mid-20th century, it is one of the world's longest continuing conflicts.[9] Various attempts have been made to resolve the conflict as part of the Israeli–Palestinian peace process, alongside other efforts to resolve the broader Arab–Israeli conflict.[10][11][12][13] Public declarations of claims to a Jewish homeland in Palestine, including the First Zionist Congress of 1897 and the Balfour Declaration of 1917, created early tensions in the region after waves of Jewish immigration. Following World War I, the Mandate for Palestine included a binding obligation for the "establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people". Tensions grew into open sectarian conflict between Jews and Arabs.[14][15] The 1947 United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine was never implemented and provoked the 1947–1949 Palestine War. The current Israeli-Palestinian status quo began following Israeli military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza in the 1967 Six-Day War, known as the Palestinian territories.
Progress was made towards a two-state solution with the Oslo Accords of 1993–1995. Final status issues include the status of Jerusalem, Israeli settlements, borders, security and water rights[16] as well as Palestinian freedom of movement[17] and the Palestinian right of return. The violence of the conflict in the region—rich in sites of historic, cultural, and religious interest worldwide—has been the subject of numerous international conferences dealing with historic rights, security issues, and human rights; and has been a factor hampering tourism in, and general access to, areas that are hotly contested.[18] The majority of peace efforts have been centred around the two-state solution, which involves the establishment of an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel. However, public support for a two-state solution, which formerly enjoyed support from both Israeli Jews and Palestinians,[19][20][21] has dwindled in recent years.[22][23][24]
Within Israeli and Palestinian society, the conflict generates a wide variety of views and opinions. Since its inception, the conflict's casualties have not been restricted to combatants, with a large number of civilian fatalities on both sides. A minority of Jewish Israelis (32 percent) support a two-state solution with the Palestinians.[25] Israeli Jews are divided along ideological lines, and many favor maintaining the status quo.[23] Approximately 60 percent of Palestinians (77% in the Gaza Strip and 46% in the West Bank), support armed attacks against Israelis within Israel as a means of ending the occupation, while 70% believe that a two-state solution is no longer practical or possible as a result of the expansion of Israeli settlements.[24] More than two-thirds of Israeli Jews say that if the West Bank were annexed by Israel, Palestinians resident there should not be permitted to vote.[26] Mutual distrust and significant disagreements are deep over basic issues, as is the reciprocal skepticism about the other side's commitment to upholding obligations in an eventual bilateral agreement.[27] Since 2006, the Palestinian side has been fractured by conflict between Fatah, the traditionally dominant party and its later electoral challenger, Hamas, a militant Islamist group that gained control of the Gaza Strip.[28] Attempts to remedy this have been repeated and continuing. Since 2019, the Israeli side has also been experiencing political upheaval, with four inconclusive legislative elections having been held over a span of two years.[29][30] The latest round of peace negotiations began in July 2013 but were suspended in 2014. Since 2006, Hamas and Israel have fought five wars, the most recent in 2023.[28]
The two parties that engage in direct negotiation are the Israeli government and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). Official negotiations are mediated by the Quartet on the Middle East, which consists of the United Nations, the United States, Russia, and the European Union. The Arab League, which has proposed the Arab Peace Initiative, is another important actor. Egypt, a founding member of the Arab League, has historically been a key participant in the Arab–Israeli conflict and related negotiations, more so since the Egypt–Israel peace treaty. Another equally key participant is Jordan, which annexed the West Bank in 1950 and held it until 1967, relinquishing its territorial claim over it to the Palestinians in 1988. An Israel–Jordan peace treaty was signed in 1994. The Jordanian royal family, the Hashemites, are responsible for custodianship over Muslim holy sites in Jerusalem.
Background
The Israeli–Palestinian conflict has its roots in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with the birth of major nationalist movements among the Jews and among the Arabs, both geared towards attaining sovereignty for their people in the Middle East.[32] The Balfour Declaration was a public statement issued by the British government in 1917 during the First World War announcing support for the establishment of a "national home for the Jewish people" in Palestine.[33] The collision between those two movements in southern Levant upon the emergence of Palestinian nationalism after the Franco-Syrian War in the 1920s escalated into the Sectarian conflict in Mandatory Palestine in 1930s and 1940s, and expanded into the wider Arab–Israeli conflict later on.[34]
The return of several hard-line Palestinian Arab nationalists, under the emerging leadership of Haj Amin al-Husseini, from Damascus to Mandatory Palestine marked the beginning of Palestinian Arab nationalist struggle towards establishment of a national home for Arabs of Palestine.[35] Amin al-Husseini, the architect of the Palestinian Arab national movement, immediately marked Jewish national movement and Jewish immigration to Palestine as the sole enemy to his cause,[36] initiating large-scale riots against the Jews as early as 1920 in Jerusalem and in 1921 in Jaffa. Among the results of the violence was the establishment of the Jewish paramilitary force Haganah. In 1929, a series of violent riots resulted in the deaths of 133 Jews and 116 Arabs, with significant Jewish casualties in Hebron and Safed, and the evacuation of Jews from Hebron and Gaza.[32]
In the early 1930s, the Arab national struggle in Palestine had drawn many Arab nationalist militants from across the Middle East, such as Sheikh Izaddin al-Qassam from Syria, who established the Black Hand militant group and had prepared the grounds for the 1936 Arab revolt. Following the death of al-Qassam at the hands of the British in late 1935, tensions erupted in 1936 into the Arab general strike and general boycott. The strike soon deteriorated into violence and the 1936–1939 Arab revolt in Palestine was bloodily repressed by the British assisted by associated forces of the Jewish Settlement Police, the Jewish Supernumerary Police, and Special Night Squads.[34] In the first wave of organized violence, lasting until early 1937, most of the Arab groups were defeated by the British and forced expulsion of much of the Arab leadership was performed. The revolt led to the establishment of the Peel Commission towards partitioning of Palestine, though it was subsequently rejected by the Palestinian Arabs. The two main Jewish leaders, Chaim Weizmann and David Ben-Gurion, accepted the recommendations but some secondary Jewish leaders disapproved of it.[37][38][39]
The renewed violence, which had sporadically lasted until the beginning of World War II, ended with around 5,000 casualties, mostly from the Arab side. With the eruption of World War II, the situation in Mandatory Palestine calmed down. It allowed a shift towards a more moderate stance among Palestinian Arabs, under the leadership of the Nashashibi clan and even the establishment of the Jewish–Arab Palestine Regiment under British command, fighting Germans in North Africa. The more radical exiled faction of al-Husseini however tended to cooperation with Nazi Germany, and participated in the establishment of a pro-Nazi propaganda machine throughout the Arab world. Defeat of Arab nationalists in Iraq and subsequent relocation of al-Husseini to Nazi-occupied Europe tied his hands regarding field operations in Palestine, though he regularly demanded that the Italians and the Germans bomb Tel Aviv. By the end of World War II, a crisis over the fate of the Holocaust survivors from Europe led to renewed tensions between the Yishuv and the Palestinian Arab leadership. Immigration quotas were established by the British, while on the other hand illegal immigration and Zionist insurgency against the British was increasing.[32]
On 29 November 1947, the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted Resolution 181(II)[40] recommending the adoption and implementation of a plan to partition Palestine into an Arab state, a Jewish state and the City of Jerusalem.[41] On the next day, Palestine was swept by violence. For four months, under continuous Arab provocation and attack, the Yishuv was usually on the defensive while occasionally retaliating.[42] The Arab League supported the Arab struggle by forming the volunteer-based Arab Liberation Army, supporting the Palestinian Arab Army of the Holy War, under the leadership of Abd al-Qadir al-Husayni and Hasan Salama. On the Jewish side, the civil war was managed by the major underground militias – the Haganah, Irgun and Lehi, strengthened by numerous Jewish veterans of World War II and foreign volunteers. By spring 1948, it was already clear that the Arab forces were nearing a total collapse, while Yishuv forces gained more and more territory, creating a large scale refugee problem of Palestinian Arabs.[32]
History
Following the Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel on 14 May 1948, the Arab League decided to intervene on behalf of Palestinian Arabs, marching their forces into former British Palestine, beginning the main phase of the 1948 Arab–Israeli War.[41] The overall fighting, leading to around 15,000 casualties, resulted in cease-fire and armistice agreements of 1949, with Israel holding much of the former Mandate territory, Jordan occupying and later annexing the West Bank and Egypt taking over the Gaza Strip, where the All-Palestine Government was declared by the Arab League on 22 September 1948.[34]
Through the 1950s, Jordan and Egypt supported the Palestinian Fedayeen militants' cross-border attacks into Israel, while Israel carried out its own reprisal operations in the host countries. The 1956 Suez Crisis resulted in a short-term Israeli occupation of the Gaza Strip and exile of the All-Palestine Government, which was later restored with Israeli withdrawal. The All-Palestine Government was completely abandoned by Egypt in 1959 and was officially merged into the United Arab Republic, to the detriment of the Palestinian national movement. Gaza Strip then was put under the authority of the Egyptian military administrator, making it a de facto military occupation. In 1964, however, a new organization, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), was established by Yasser Arafat.[41] It immediately won the support of most Arab League governments and was granted a seat in the Arab League.
The 1967 Six-Day War exerted a significant effect upon Palestinian nationalism, as Israel gained military control of the West Bank from Jordan and the Gaza Strip from Egypt. Consequently, the PLO was unable to establish any control on the ground and established its headquarters in Jordan, home to hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, and supported the Jordanian army during the War of Attrition, which included the Battle of Karameh. However, the Palestinian base in Jordan collapsed with the Jordanian–Palestinian civil war in 1970. The PLO defeat by the Jordanians caused most of the Palestinian militants to relocate to South Lebanon, where they soon took over large areas, creating the so-called "Fatahland".
Palestinian insurgency in South Lebanon peaked in the early 1970s, as Lebanon was used as a base to launch attacks on northern Israel and airplane hijacking campaigns worldwide, which drew Israeli retaliation. During the Lebanese Civil War, Palestinian militants continued to launch attacks against Israel while also battling opponents within Lebanon. In 1978, the Coastal Road massacre led to the Israeli full-scale invasion known as Operation Litani. Israeli forces, however, quickly withdrew from Lebanon, and the attacks against Israel resumed. In 1982, following an assassination attempt on one of its diplomats by Palestinians, the Israeli government decided to take sides in the Lebanese Civil War and the 1982 Lebanon War commenced. The initial results for Israel were successful. Most Palestinian militants were defeated within several weeks, Beirut was captured, and the PLO headquarters were evacuated to Tunisia in June by Yasser Arafat's decision.[34]
The first Palestinian uprising began in 1987 as a response to escalating attacks and the endless occupation. By the early 1990s, international efforts to settle the conflict had begun, in light of the success of the Egyptian–Israeli peace treaty of 1982. Eventually, the Israeli–Palestinian peace process led to the Oslo Accords of 1993, allowing the PLO to relocate from Tunisia and take ground in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, establishing the Palestinian National Authority. The peace process also had significant opposition among radical Islamic elements of Palestinian society, such as Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, who immediately initiated a campaign of attacks targeting Israelis. Following hundreds of casualties and a wave of radical anti-government propaganda, Israeli Prime Minister Rabin was assassinated by an Israeli fanatic who objected to the peace initiative. This struck a serious blow to the peace process, from which the newly elected government of Israel in 1996 backed off.[32]
Following several years of unsuccessful negotiations, the conflict re-erupted as the Second Intifada in September 2000.[34] The violence, escalating into an open conflict between the Palestinian National Security Forces and the Israel Defense Forces, lasted until 2004/2005 and led to approximately 130 fatalities. In 2005, Israeli Prime Minister Sharon ordered the removal of Israeli settlers and soldiers from Gaza. Israel and its Supreme Court formally declared an end to occupation, saying it "had no effective control over what occurred" in Gaza.[43] However, the United Nations, Human Rights Watch and many other international bodies and NGOs continue to consider Israel to be the occupying power of the Gaza Strip as Israel controls Gaza Strip's airspace, territorial waters and controls the movement of people or goods in or out of Gaza by air or sea.[43][44][45]
In 2006, Hamas won a plurality of 44% in the Palestinian parliamentary election. Israel responded it would begin economic sanctions unless Hamas agreed to accept prior Israeli-Palestinian agreements, forswear violence, and recognize Israel's right to exist, which Hamas rejected.[46] After internal Palestinian political struggle between Fatah and Hamas erupted into the Battle of Gaza (2007), Hamas took full control of the area.[47] In 2007, Israel imposed a naval blockade on the Gaza Strip, and cooperation with Egypt allowed a ground blockade of the Egyptian border.
The tensions between Israel and Hamas escalated until late 2008, when Israel launched operation Cast Lead upon Gaza, resulting in thousands of civilian casualties and billions of dollars in damage. By February 2009, a ceasefire was signed with international mediation between the parties, though the occupation and small and sporadic eruptions of violence continued.[citation needed]
In 2011, a Palestinian Authority attempt to gain UN membership as a fully sovereign state failed. In Hamas-controlled Gaza, sporadic rocket attacks on Israel and Israeli air raids still take place.[48][49][50][51] In November 2012, the representation of Palestine in UN was upgraded to a non-member observer State, and its mission title was changed from "Palestine (represented by PLO)" to "State of Palestine". In 2014, another war between Israel and Gaza occurred resulting in over 70 Israeli casualties and over 2000 Palestinians casualties.
In November 2022, with the election of the 37th government of Israel, a coalition government led by Benjamin Netanyahu and notable for its inclusion of far-right politicians,[52] violence in the conflict increased, with a rise in military actions such as the January 2023 Jenin incursion, the June 2023 Jenin incursion, the July 2023 Jenin incursion, and events such as the 2023 Al-Aqsa clashes, the May 2023 Gaza–Israel clashes, and the 2023 Israel–Hamas war, alongside Palestinian political violence has produced a death toll in 2023 that is the highest in the conflict since 2005.[53]
Peace process
Oslo Accords (1993)
In 1993, Israeli officials led by Yitzhak Rabin and Palestinian leaders from the Palestine Liberation Organization led by Yasser Arafat strove to find a peaceful solution through what became known as the Oslo peace process. A crucial milestone in this process was Arafat's letter of recognition of Israel's right to exist. In 1993, the Oslo Accords were finalized as a framework for future Israeli–Palestinian relations. The crux of the Oslo agreement was that Israel would gradually cede control of the Palestinian territories over to the Palestinians in exchange for peace. The Oslo process was delicate and progressed in fits and starts. The process took a turning point at the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin in November 1995 and finally unraveled when Arafat and Ehud Barak failed to reach agreement at Camp David in July 2000. Robert Malley, special assistant to US President Bill Clinton for Arab–Israeli Affairs, has confirmed that while Barak made no formal written offer to Arafat, the US did present concepts for peace which were considered by the Israeli side yet left unanswered by Arafat: "the Palestinians' principal failing is that from the beginning of the Camp David summit onward they were unable either to say yes to the American ideas or to present a cogent and specific counterproposal of their own".[54] Consequently, there are different accounts of the proposals considered.[55][56][57]
Camp David Summit (2000)
In July 2000, US President Bill Clinton convened a peace summit between Palestinian President Yasser Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak. Barak reportedly put forward the following as "bases for negotiation", via the US to the Palestinian President: a non-militarized Palestinian state split into 3–4 parts containing 87–92%[en 1] of the West Bank including only parts of East Jerusalem, and the entire Gaza Strip,[58][59] as well as a stipulation that 69 Jewish settlements (which comprise 85% of the West Bank's Jewish settlers) would be ceded to Israel, no right of return to Israel, no sovereignty over the Temple Mount or any core East Jerusalem neighbourhoods, and continued Israel control over the Jordan Valley.[60][61]
Arafat rejected this offer.[58][62][63][64][65][66] According to the Palestinian negotiators the offer did not remove many of the elements of the Israeli occupation regarding land, security, settlements, and Jerusalem.[67] President Clinton reportedly requested that Arafat make a counter-offer, but he proposed none. Former Israeli Foreign Minister Shlomo Ben Ami who kept a diary of the negotiations said in an interview in 2001, when asked whether the Palestinians made a counterproposal: "No. And that is the heart of the matter. Never, in the negotiations between us and the Palestinians, was there a Palestinian counterproposal."[68] In a separate interview in 2006 Ben Ami stated that were he a Palestinian he would have rejected the Camp David offer.[69]
No tenable solution was crafted which would satisfy both Israeli and Palestinian demands, even under intense US pressure. Clinton has long blamed Arafat for the collapse of the summit.[70] In the months following the summit, Clinton appointed former US Senator George J. Mitchell to lead a fact-finding committee aiming to identify strategies for restoring the peace process. The committee's findings were published in 2001 with the dismantlement of existing Israeli settlements and Palestinian crackdown on militant activity being one strategy.[71]
Developments following Camp David
Following the failed summit Palestinian and Israeli negotiators continued to meet in small groups through August and September 2000 to try to bridge the gaps between their respective positions. The United States prepared its own plan to resolve the outstanding issues. Clinton's presentation of the US proposals was delayed by the advent of the Second Intifada at the end of September.[67]
Clinton's plan, eventually presented on 23 December 2000, proposed the establishment of a sovereign Palestinian state in the Gaza strip and 94–96 percent of the West Bank plus the equivalent of 1–3 percent of the West Bank in land swaps from pre-1967 Israel. On Jerusalem, the plan stated that "the general principle is that Arab areas are Palestinian and that Jewish areas are Israeli." The holy sites were to be split on the basis that Palestinians would have sovereignty over the Temple Mount/Noble sanctuary, while the Israelis would have sovereignty over the Western Wall. On refugees the plan suggested a number of proposals including financial compensation, the right of return to the Palestinian state, and Israeli acknowledgment of suffering caused to the Palestinians in 1948. Security proposals referred to a "non-militarized" Palestinian state, and an international force for border security. Both sides accepted Clinton's plan[67][72][73] and it became the basis for the negotiations at the Taba Peace summit the following January.[67]
Taba Summit (2001)
The Israeli negotiation team presented a new map at the Taba Summit in Taba, Egypt, in January 2001. The proposition removed the "temporarily Israeli controlled" areas, and the Palestinian side accepted this as a basis for further negotiation. With Israeli elections looming the talks ended without an agreement but the two sides issued a joint statement attesting to the progress they had made: "The sides declare that they have never been closer to reaching an agreement and it is thus our shared belief that the remaining gaps could be bridged with the resumption of negotiations following the Israeli elections." The following month the Likud party candidate Ariel Sharon defeated Ehud Barak in the Israeli elections and was elected as Israeli prime minister on 7 February 2001. Sharon's new government chose not to resume the high-level talks.[67]
Road Map for Peace
One peace proposal, presented by the Quartet of the European Union, Russia, the United Nations and the United States on 17 September 2002, was the Road Map for Peace. This plan did not attempt to resolve difficult questions such as the fate of Jerusalem or Israeli settlements, but left that to be negotiated in later phases of the process. The proposal never made it beyond the first phase, whose goals called for a halt to both Israeli settlement construction and Israeli–Palestinian violence. Neither goal has been achieved as of November 2015.[74][75][76]
Arab Peace Initiative
The Arab Peace Initiative (Arabic: مبادرة السلام العربية Mubādirat as-Salām al-ʿArabīyyah), also known as the Saudi Initiative, was first proposed by Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia at the Beirut Summit (2002). The peace initiative is a proposed solution to the Arab–Israeli conflict as a whole, and the Israeli–Palestinian conflict in particular.[77] The initiative was initially published on 28 March 2002, at the Beirut Summit, and agreed upon again in 2007 in the Riyadh Summit. Unlike the Road Map for Peace, it spelled out "final-solution" borders based explicitly on the UN borders established before the 1967 Six-Day War. It offered full normalization of relations with Israel, in exchange for the withdrawal of its forces from all the occupied territories, including the Golan Heights, to recognize "an independent Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital" in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, as well as a "just solution" for the Palestinian refugees.[78]
The Palestinian Authority led by Yasser Arafat immediately embraced the initiative.[79] His successor Mahmoud Abbas also supported the plan and officially asked U.S. President Barack Obama to adopt it as part of his Middle East policy.[80] Islamist political party Hamas, the elected government of the Gaza Strip, was deeply divided,[81] with most factions rejecting the plan.[82] Palestinians have criticised the Israel–United Arab Emirates normalization agreement and another with Bahrain signed in September 2020, fearing the moves weaken the Arab Peace Initiative, regarding the UAE’s move as "a betrayal."[83]
The Israeli government under Ariel Sharon rejected the initiative as a "non-starter"[84] because it required Israel to withdraw to pre-June 1967 borders.[85] After the renewed Arab League endorsement in 2007, then-Prime Minister Ehud Olmert gave a cautious welcome to the plan.[86] In 2015, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu expressed tentative support for the Initiative,[87] but in 2018, he rejected it as a basis for future negotiations with the Palestinians.[88]
Present status
The peace process has been predicated on a "two-state solution" thus far, but questions have been raised towards both sides' resolve to end the dispute.[89] An article by S. Daniel Abraham, an American entrepreneur and founder of the Center for Middle East Peace in Washington, US, published on the website of the Atlantic magazine in March 2013, cited the following statistics: "Right now, the total number of Jews and Arabs living... in Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza is just under 12 million people. At the moment, a shade under 50 percent of the population is Jewish."[90]
In April 2021, Human Rights Watch released its report A Threshold Crossed, making accusations that the policies of Israel towards Palestinians living in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza constituted the crime of apartheid.[91] A further report titled Israel's Apartheid Against Palestinians: Cruel System of Domination and Crime Against Humanity was released by Amnesty International on 1 February 2022.[92]
Israel's settlement policy
Israel has had its settlement growth and policies in the Palestinian territories harshly criticized by the European Union citing it as increasingly undermining the viability of the two-state solution and running in contrary to the Israeli-stated commitment to resume negotiations.[93][94] In December 2011, all the regional groupings on the UN Security Council named continued settlement construction and settler violence as disruptive to the resumption of talks, a call viewed by Russia as a "historic step".[95][96][97] In April 2012, international outrage followed Israeli steps to further entrench the Jewish settlements in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, which included the publishing of tenders for further settler homes and the plan to legalize settler outposts. Britain said that the move was a breach of Israeli commitments under the road map to freeze all settlement expansion in the land captured since 1967. The British Foreign Minister stated that the "Systematic, illegal Israeli settlement activity poses the most significant and live threat to the viability of the two state solution".[98] In May 2012 the 27 foreign ministers of the European Union issued a statement which condemned continued Israeli settler violence and incitement.[99] In a similar move, the Quartet "expressed its concern over ongoing settler violence and incitement in the West Bank," calling on Israel "to take effective measures, including bringing the perpetrators of such acts to justice."[100] The Palestinian Ma'an News agency reported the PA Cabinet's statement on the issue stated that the West, including East Jerusalem, were seeing "an escalation in incitement and settler violence against our people with a clear protection from the occupation military. The last of which was the thousands of settler march in East Jerusalem which included slogans inciting to kill, hate and supports violence".[101]
Israeli Military Police
In a report published in February 2014 covering incidents over the three-year period of 2011–2013, Amnesty International asserted that Israeli forces employed reckless violence in the West Bank, and in some instances appeared to engage in wilful killings which would be tantamount to war crimes. Besides the numerous fatalities, Amnesty said at least 261 Palestinians, including 67 children, had been gravely injured by Israeli use of live ammunition. In this same period, 45 Palestinians, including 6 children had been killed. Amnesty's review of 25 civilians deaths concluded that in no case was there evidence of the Palestinians posing an imminent threat. At the same time, over 8,000 Palestinians suffered serious injuries from other means, including rubber-coated metal bullets. Only one IDF soldier was convicted, killing a Palestinian attempting to enter Israel illegally. The soldier was demoted and given a 1-year sentence with a five-month suspension. The IDF answered the charges stating that its army held itself "to the highest of professional standards", adding that when there was suspicion of wrongdoing, it investigated and took action "where appropriate".[102][103]
Incitement
Following the Oslo Accords, which was to set up regulative bodies to rein in frictions, Palestinian incitement against Israel, Jews, and Zionism continued, parallel with Israel's pursuance of settlements in the Palestinian territories,[104] though under Abu Mazen it has reportedly dwindled significantly.[105] Charges of incitement have been reciprocal,[106][107] both sides interpreting media statements in the Palestinian and Israeli press as constituting incitement.[105] Schoolbooks published for both Israeli and Palestinian schools have been found to have encouraged one-sided narrative and even hatred of the other side.[108][109][110][111][112][113] Perpetrators of murderous attacks, whether against Israelis or Palestinians, often find strong vocal support from sections of their communities despite varying levels of condemnation from politicians.[114][115][116]
Both parties to the conflict have been criticized by third-parties for teaching incitement to their children by downplaying each side's historical ties to the area, teaching propagandist maps, or indoctrinate their children to one day join the armed forces.[117][118]
UN and the Palestinian state
The PLO have campaigned for full member status for the state of Palestine at the UN and for recognition on the 1967 borders. The campaign has received widespread support,[119][120] although it has been criticised by the US and Israel for allegedly avoiding bilateral negotiation.[121][122] Netanyahu has criticized the Palestinians of purportedly trying to bypass direct talks,[123] whereas Abbas has argued that the continued construction of Israeli-Jewish settlements is "undermining the realistic potential" for the two-state solution.[124] Although Palestine has been denied full member status by the UN Security Council,[125] in late 2012 the UN General Assembly overwhelmingly approved the de facto recognition of sovereign Palestine by granting non-member state status.[126]
Public support
Polling data has produced mixed results regarding the level of support among Palestinians for the two-state solution. A poll was carried out in 2011 by the Hebrew University; it indicated that support for a two-state solution was growing among both Israelis and Palestinians. The poll found that 58% of Israelis and 50% of Palestinians supported a two-state solution based on the Clinton Parameters, compared with 47% of Israelis and 39% of Palestinians in 2003, the first year the poll was carried out. The poll also found that an increasing percentage of both populations supported an end to violence—63% of Palestinians and 70% of Israelis expressing their support for an end to violence, an increase of 2% for Israelis and 5% for Palestinians from the previous year.[127]
Following the outbreak of war between Israel and Hamas on October 7, 2023, President Joe Biden made a strong statement of support for Israel. On the same day that Israel declared war against the terrorist group, the United States announced that it would send renewed shipments of arms and move its Mediterranean Sea warships closer to Israel. While the UN Security Council called an emergency meeting to discuss the renewed violence, the members failed to come to a consensus statement. Given the history of brutality when Israel and Palestinian extremist groups have fought in the past, international groups quickly expressed concern for the safety of civilians in Israel and the Palestinian territories as well as those being held hostage by militants in Gaza. In the first two days of fighting, approximately 800 Israelis and 500 Palestinians were killed. Increasing loss of life is of primary concern in the conflict.
While the United States did not immediately confirm reports that Iranian intelligence and security forces directly helped Hamas plan its October 7 attack, Iran has a well-established patronage relationship with Hamas and other extremist groups across the Middle East. In addition to worries that the attacks were a signal from Iran that it is prepared to escalate its malign influence in various Middle Eastern conflicts, experts have expressed concern that another extremist group with Iranian backing, Hezbollah, will be drawn into the war, thereby expanding the conflict beyond Israeli and Palestinian borders. On October 9, reports surfaced that the IDF was firing at targets within Lebanon, where Hezbollah is based. An Israeli statement on the matter did not clarify the purpose of the cross-boundary operation.
A 2023 effort by the United States to help broker a normalization accord between Israel and Saudi Arabia was thrown into chaos by the October conflict. Saudi Arabia has long advocated for the rights and safety of Palestinian Arab populations in Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza. Especially in Gaza, those populations are now in the path of IDF operations, jeopardizing the progress the Israelis and Saudis made toward common understanding.
The most far-right and religious government in Israel’s history was inaugurated in late December 2022. The coalition government is led by Benjamin ‘Bibi’ Netanyahu and his Likud party and comprises two ultra-Orthodox parties and three far-right parties, including the Religious Zionism party, an ultranationalist faction affiliated with the West Bank settler movement. To reach a governing majority, Netanyahu made a variety of concessions to his far-right partners. Opponents have criticized the government’s stated prioritization of the expansion and development of Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank. The governing coalition has also endorsed discrimination against LGBTQ+ people on religious grounds, and it voted to limit judicial oversight of the government in May 2023 after a delay due to nationwide protests in March.
2022 marked a renewed level of violence between Israelis and Palestinians. The first nine months of 2023 were characterized by a steady trend of clashes in the West Bank, including nearly daily Israeli incursions. Israel approved five thousand new settler homes in June 2023 which, along with other settlements in Palestinian territory, are considered by experts and intergovernmental institutions to be illegal under international law. The Israeli military also escalated its operations, including raiding the al-Aqsa mosque twice in one day, wounding thirty-five in a Ramallah operation, and firing missiles from a helicopter at the Jenin refugee camp. In May, Israel battled Gazan militants for five days, with nearly two thousand combined missile launches by Hamas and Israeli forces. Then, in July, Israel deployed nearly two thousand troops and conducted drone strikes in a large-scale raid on the Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank, killing twelve Palestinians and wounding fifty. Israel, which lost one soldier in the operation, claimed all those killed were militants. While withdrawing, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the incursion was “not a one-off” incident; Israel intends to prevent the camp from serving as a safe haven for Jenin Brigades and other militant groups. Hamas responded to the raid by carrying out an attack in Tel Aviv and launching missiles at Israel.
The October 2023 conflict between Israel and Hamas marks the most significant escalation of the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict in several decades.
