The Modern Day Arab-Israeli Conflict:

Why the Two-State Solution Will Not Work

Laini Soszynski

IRLS660: Middle East Politics and Security

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Dr. Michael McNeal

June 14, 2015

Introduction to the Conflict

After the fall of the Ottoman Empire, Britain and France

began establishing mandates within the Middle East, declaring

which country would be assigned to each division of land cut up

by the Sykes-Picot Agreement. The small area of land designated

Palestine was mandated by Britain, with the intent of the land

ultimately becoming a home for the Jewish population as per the

Balfour Declaration of 1917. This declaration, addressed to the

Zionist Federation from the British Foreign Secretary, gave hope

to the Jewish population, which at the time was spread thin over

multiple countries, that they would soon have a place to call

their own (Modern History Sourcebook 1997). In 1948, when the

state of Israel was established following World War II and the

exile and slaughter of millions of Jewish people in Europe, many

immigrated to the newly established Zionist land with the

intention of establishing a safe-haven on Jewish land. This

vision met reality as some one-million Arabs inhabiting the land-

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at that point for over a thousand years- offered opposition

towards the new settlers (Esco 1947).

Shortly after the state of Israel’s establishment and the

end of the Palestinian mandate, war between the Jewish population

and the Arab neighbors of Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria

erupted, something that would become a norm as the state grew

with population, international political influence, and military

power. Within the borders of the country, the Palestinians

continue to display unrest and refusal to be completely

overthrown by the Jewish state. This conflict would be the cause

of countless wars, occupations, policies and regulations, and

uprisings throughout the history that followed the state’s

establishment. Various actors, including Hamas, the Palestinian

Liberation Organization (PLO), the Palestinian National

Authority, and the United States have begun searching for and

pushing an agreement to be made between the two parties within

the region, dubbed the two-state solution. Since the solution had

been proposed, negotiations occurred between the Palestinians and

Israelis, with what appeared to be continuous progress and

deliberation. Although there is a façade of progress towards a

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two-state solution, the two parties will not come to an agreement

in the future because of the tumultuous history, differing

religions, and outside influences of the region.

A Tumultuous History

The Israelis, despite their unfortunate past of

segregation, exile, and massacring, most predominantly during

World War II with Hitler’s extermination of six-million Jews, do

not feel pressured to ensure the same segregation and exile does

not occur to the Arabs the Jewish state is displacing

(Projetaladin 2009). In fact, the Jewish state was established

with a defense mentality, in which all neighbors are enemies and

only few can be trusted. This mentality can be seen with the

immediate disrespect for the boundaries established by the

British mandate with the onset of the first Israeli-Arab war of

1948. This war, in which Israel attacked its neighbors Egypt,

Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria, set the tone of the new state with

the establishment of the Green Line, also known as the 1949

Armistice Agreements. This agreement brought in outside actors

within the United Nations to ensure borders and armistice lines

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were not violated (Morris 1993). The fact that outside forces had

to step in as observers shortly after the Jewish state was

established worked as support for the new state, but also

indicated that the state would need to be monitored throughout

its new life.

Israel defied the agreements of these nations again with the

Six-Day War of 1967. This war, in which Israel successfully

expanded its territory into Egypt (the Sinai Peninsula) and Syria

(Golan Heights), as well as the West Bank and Gaza Strip, marked

a turning point for the Jewish state in which the Jewish people

experienced a psychological boost of being in control of

virtually all historical land originally sought by Zionism whilst

defending themselves from what was believed to be an impending

overthrow by neighboring Arab states (Freidman 1995). This war

brought Israel closer as a state as it experienced the high of

nationalism, albeit only to be grounded once more by the Yom

Kippur War of 1973 in which the Arab coalition attempted to

recapture its land. Ultimately, Egypt gained back the Sinai

Peninsula yet Syria suffered tremendous losses in personnel and

land with its failure to recapture Golan Heights in northern

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Israel (History 2015).

Unrest in the Middle East grew as Israel began establishing

itself internationally as the Jewish state. Outside actors such

as the United States offered assistance to the Jewish state,

mostly via military training and equipment as well as through

political aid and democratic support, yet continuously ignored

the Palestinians whom were quietly attempting to maintain a

balanced state of Israeli occupation. The main voice for the

Palestinians, Yasser Arafat and the Palestinian Liberation

Organization (PLO) had been relocated to Lebanon in the early

1980’s, which caused the Palestinians still occupying the West

Bank and Gaza Strip to lose faith in a hope for a two-state

solution (Freidman 1995). Without a voice for the Palestinians,

they were left to obey the Israeli policies and laws of the

occupation.

The years following the 1967 Six-Day War that resulted in

Israeli occupation of the West bank and Gaza Strip began the

build-up of Palestinian national identity. By the late 1980’s

into the early 1990’s, Israel would experience the first intifada. A

word which literally translates from Arabic to “a tremor, a

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shudder or a shiver,” described the first Palestinian uprising in

which revolts and protests began taking place as the Palestinians

started to refuse to work along-side the occupying Israelis

(Freidman 1995, 375). The rise of Palestinian nationalism gave

birth to what today is classified as a terrorist organization

known as Hamas, as well as the Palestinian National Authority

(PNA), two groups whose differences reflected the Palestinians’

uncertainty over their own identity (Kamrava 2014).

The Israeli occupation of the two Palestinian areas, the

West Bank and the Gaza Strip, gave rise to two different

Palestinian organizations which would eventually come to control

the two areas. Hamas, founded in 1987 as the first group within

Israeli boundaries to emerge as an armed resistance to the Jewish

State, controls the Gaza Strip (Laub 2014). The Palestinian

National Authority, established in 1994 and continues the push

for a peace agreement between the Arabs and Jews, controls the

West Bank (Britannica 2014). These two groups have grown to

differ in ideology, methodology, and long term proposals for

solutions so much so that tensions have grown among the two,

causing an internal Palestinian conflict in addition to the pre-

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existing Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

The growth of these two groups caused tensions to rise

between not only the Israelis and Palestinians, but also the two

factions of Palestinians. Despite the signing of the Oslo Accords

in 1993, which stated that Israel was to withdraw troops from

Palestinian territories and aid in the transition towards

Palestinian self-rule, over 100,000 new Israeli settlers moved

into the West Bank and Gaza Strip, with thirty new settlements

built (Kamrava 2014, 332). This failure to follow through with

promises erupted in 2000 as the second intifada, proving to be more

violent than the first with 469 Israeli casualties due to

Palestinian suicide bombers (Kamrava 2014, 323). At this point,

the conflict within the borders of Israel had carried on for the

better part of a century, caused thousands of fatalities and made

no advancements towards a peace agreement.

The Role of Religion

As with most conflicts in the Middle East, religion plays

an intricate role. With the Arab-Israeli conflict, the most

predominant religious aspect is the fact of the Jewish state

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being established in an Islamic region of the world. The drive

for the Jewish state is embedded deep within the Zionist faith,

claiming biblical justifications in inheriting the Holy Land of

Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Nazareth, and other surrounding religious

sites. The immigrating Jewish settlers, with a deepened yearning

for faith after the atrocities of the Holocaust, wished for a

solely Jewish state in which the land, governance, and practices

of the state were inherently Zionist. This vision began without

the consideration for the indigenous Arab population that had

already established a society and cultivated the land as its own

(Jews for Justice 2001).

Prior to the Jewish state of Israel being established, in

1941 there were some 470,000 Jewish settlers within the Mandate

of Palestine to some 1.1 million Arab Muslims. After the Jewish

state was officially established, the Jewish population grew to

1.2 million in 1950, while the Muslim population stayed the same

(Israeli Central 2007). Over the course of the next 60 years,

Israel’s population will have grown to 7.5 million people, 5.7

million Jews to the similar to pre-Israel statistic of 1.2

million Muslims.

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The drive of the Jewish settlers was largely to regain

ancestral territory dating back to 1100 B.C. The Zionist kingdoms

of David and Solomon endured for only a short amount of time

before falling apart to the Romans in 586 B.C. (Jews for Justice

2001). Although the Jewish settlers believed that the Arabs that

inhabited the land prior to the establishment of a Jewish state

were anti-Semitic, such was not entirely the case. Where the

Israeli’s appreciated the role of religion in their drive for

nationalism, the Palestinians’ main motivation, towards the

beginning, was their attachment to the land and their sense of

nationalism following Arab Islamic rule of the region since the

seventh century (Said 1992).

As the Jewish people began immigrating to Palestine, the

tensions between religions began to rise. Prior to the

established state, Jews, Muslims, and Christians all lived in the

area of the Holy Land in relative harmony. Post-World War II and

the victimization of the Jewish faith brought distrust to the

table of the Jews and because of this, some felt the need to

proclaim religion as a primary motivation for the Jewish

occupation. The mistreatment of Palestinian Arabs following the

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immigration of the Jews did not go unnoticed by the Arab region

of the Middle East. Today, Hamas, whose slogan is “Islam is the

answer” rules the Gaza strip, which is some 1.3 million Arabs;

promoting religion to reject Israel as a state has caused an

influx of terrorist-related events such as suicide bombers and

the 1972 Olympic Massacres, and was the driving force for the

2008 assault of the Israeli Defense Forces and Hamas in Gaza

Strip (Kamrava 2014, 339). With the growth of Jihadist terrorist

organizations- promoting war in the name of Islam- religion will

likely take a front-seat role with the Arab-Israeli conflict in

the near future.

Outside Influences

The two major outside influences of the Palestinian-

Israeli conflict include the United States aiding Israel with

military strength and political advice and the refusal of the

United Nations General Assembly and Security Council to recognize

Palestine as a state. Additional influences include Iran’s

disdain for the Jewish state, which is reciprocated by Iran’s

power over the Lebanese Hezbollah, and the newly established

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Islamic State (ISIS) who has declared “Death to the Jews” as an

overall goal for the jihadist terror group.

Until recently, the United States had ignored the

Palestinians’ need of assistance and the Israeli’s maltreatment

of the indigenous population of the area. Israel is the largest

recipient of United States aid to date, being provided over $121

billion in assistance since its establishment, with almost all

aid being in the form of military support. Additionally, Israel

also receives funds from defense appropriations for rocket and

missile defense programs (Sharp 2014). Israel and the United

States share a number of common goals and a commitment to

democracy. Israel is maintained as one of the United States’

primary partners of the Middle East, which causes additional

conflict to both parties.

Some critiques of the United States’ aid to Israel correlate

the imbalance of power between the Jewish and Arab settlers

within the country, giving the example of the 2008 Gaza invasion,

in which Israeli Defense Forces responded to Hamas rocket attacks

with aerial strikes that killed civilians and police officers of

the Gaza Strip. This attack on Palestinian refugees, whom were

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already denied access to food, fuel, water, and electricity by

the Israelis, was classified as non-justifiable per the United

Nations Resolution- an armed attack does not entail self-defense,

as the Israelis argued (Javaid, Shamim 2010). To the contrary,

President George W. Bush blatantly supported Israel’s non-

justifiable attack, stating that “Hamas’s continued rocket

attacks into Israel must cease if the violence is to stop,”

adding that the refugee deaths and destruction of property was

Hamas’s fault (Siddiqui 2009). With the West’s approval, Israel

continued its bombing campaign, attacking the entirety of the

Gaza Strip and the border of Egypt. Despite the plead of Russia,

France, the Arab League and Organization of Islamic Conference to

cease the attacks on the Palestinians, the United States remained

faithful to Israel and continued to send aid.

The fact that the United States favors Israel over the

Palestinians to the point of aiding in the needless slaughter of

the innocents created an imbalance not only in the Palestinian-

Israeli conflict, but the Arab-Israeli conflict as a whole.

Unfortunately, due to the immense clout that the United States

carries, it can also be to blame for the lack of recognition of

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Palestinian refugees by the United Nations High Commissioner for

Refugees (UNHCR), keeping Palestinians in need from receiving aid

from the United Nations (Linklater 2013). This refusal of

recognition also pored over to the United Nations General

Assembly’s lack of acceptance of Palestine as a state, keeping

the Palestinians from having a political voice and any

international recognition (Hansen 2013). If the Arabs of

Palestine cannot speak up politically, how will they have the

chance to aid in a two-state agreement?

Contrary to the problems that the Palestinians are having

with regards to international recognition, Israel continues to

build reason for enemies to oppose its state. Outside actors such

as Iran, who controls the Lebanese Hezbollah, influences how the

Middle East perceives Israel because of its reputation as the

region’s superpower. Iran, being an outspoken supporter of the

Palestinians, has been known to arm Hamas, Hezbollah, and even

Palestinians in the West Bank in an effort to encircle the

Israeli Jewish settlers. Iran’s recent deals with Russia to

advance its arsenal of missiles and rockets suggests that

although the nuclear deals have hindered Iran’s nuclear powers,

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it does not sit unprotected from a potential attack from Israel

(Segall 2014). Iran’s covert and overt involvement with the Arab-

Israeli conflict only causes tensions to rise, and the recent

nuclear deals between President Barak Obama of the United States

and Iran bring questions of trust towards the Israelis into play.

Modern Day Peace Advancements- Is there progress?

In March of 2015, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of

Israel ran for re-election for the Likud Party against Isaac

Herzog of the Zionist Union. The pre-election polls published the

Friday before the elections predicted a victorious Herzog with a

four to five seat lead (Ravid 2015). Netanyahu, determined to be

re-elected and understanding the politics of Israel, declared

hastily in a last-ditch effort to seize votes that “I think that

anyone who is going to establish a Palestinian state today and

evacuate lands, is giving attack grounds to the radical Islam

against the state of Israel... If I’m elected, there will be no

Palestinian state” (Netanyahu 2015). The fact that Netanyahu was

behind his competitor until this statement was made, which

resulted in a clean win, indicates the direction of the Israeli

people in regards to their desires and the future of their state.

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This declaration, although withdrawn shortly after Netanyahu was

re-elected, gives a clear indicator towards the direction of the

two-state solution; there will not be a two-state solution at any

point in the near future.

The rejection of the Palestinians due to political conflict

is a topic that should be of growing concern. Today, although

Gaza is ruled by Hamas, a Palestinian organization, it is almost

entirely considered refugees, which by definition is a “displaced

persons of concern, who are often the victims of civil war”

(Linklater 2014). The Gaza Strip is home of 1.76 million

Palestinians, and of these, 1.26 million are considered refugees.

These refugees are stationed in a total of eight camps across the

strip, with only 22 health centers (UNRWA 2014). To this day,

Israel has imposed a blockade on the camps that restrict the

imports and exports, reconstruction, and aid to the region.

Because of the political conflicts involved with Hamas, Israeli

Defense Forces, the United States, and the Palestinian National

Authority, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for

Refugees is unable to recognize these refugees and send aid to

them. Of the entire population of Palestinians, some 11 million

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world-wide, almost half of them are displaced and considered

refugees.

Despite the growing number of refugees, Israel continues to

justify its attacks on the Gaza Strip and the region that had

democratically elected Hamas as their ruler. The 2008 attacks on

the Gaza Strip by Israeli Air Force, which was claimed to have

been “self-defense” by Israel following Hamas rocket attacks

fired at southern Israel, caused a conflict that lasted eight

days. Israel had attacked innocent civilians, destroyed homes,

schools, and infrastructure, killing 161 Palestinians, 103 of

which were civilians, and injuring 1,269. Israel, on the other

hand, had only six casualties and 244 wounded (Kamrava 2014,

341). Still, the United States supported their rebuttal of the

Hamas rocket attacks.

Hamas had attempted to remain strong throughout the entirety

of the conflict, but with weakening relationships with Iran and

Syria, as well as the coup d’état of the Muslim Brotherhood in

Egypt, which had also been a support system for the Palestinian

group, it was left with no choice but to reconcile with the

leader of the West Bank, Mahmoud Abbas, of the Palestinian

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National Authority. Although vehemently opposed by Netanyahu, the

reconciliation was seen as a great success to the United States

and Europe, who had announced their intention to cooperate with

the re-established alliance (Sharon 2014). Instead of seeing this

affiliation as an opportunity for political advancement,

Netanyahu sought out methods to undermine the reconciliation.

Shortly after this appeasement between the Gaza Strip and the

West Bank, three Israeli youths were kidnapped and found

murdered, which gave the Israeli leader the excuse he needed to

launch another destabilizing attack.

Israel launched “Operation Protective Edge,” another Gaza

invasion that proved to be much more devastating than the 2008

precursor. The aim of the Gaza invasion was once again to cease

incoming Hamas rocket fire and to avenge the kidnapping and

murder of the three Israeli teenagers by Hamas. Hamas’s intention

of the kidnapping was to have Israel lift the blockade on the

Gaza strip that had stopped any aid, electricity, food, and water

from coming through to the Palestinian refugees. Instead of

negotiating a blockade lift, the Israelis responded with full

military invasion of Gaza. According to the United Nations,

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throughout the invasion, which lasted from July 7 to August 26,

2,131 Palestinians were killed. Among the dead were 1,473

civilians, including 501 children and 257 women (IMEU 2014). This

invasion also resulted in 1,500 orphaned children, 11,100 wounded

Palestinians, and over 1,000 Palestinians left with life-long

disabilities. Additionally, some 108,000 were left homeless,

which added to the shortage of housing units that existed

already.

Gaza, an area inhabited by over a million refugees already,

is now left to rebuild what the Israelis had deemed an

appropriate “self-defense” approach towards indirect rocket fire

and the kidnapping and murder of three teenagers. A pattern that

has emerged over the course of the Jewish state’s existence has

been the lack of respect for documented agreements between

organizations, countries, and governments. It is often the case,

as it was with the 1948 attack on neighboring countries, the 1967

breech of the Green Line established by the 1949 Armistice, and

the 2008 Gaza war. Similarly, Israeli attacks often need to be

placated by outside forces, as was the case with many of its

attacks.

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With the leadership of Netanyahu, a two state solution will

not occur, a fact that had proven itself even without the

election speech that was given in March of 2015. The Israeli

Prime Minister had not made any advancement towards a two-state

solution and continues to find reasons to attack and dislodge the

Palestinian stability within Gaza and the West Bank. The Prime

Minister continuously claims that the Palestinians are

terrorists, and in doing so has convinced Western media, which

had readily sided with the Jewish state due to the relationship

between it and the United States, to portray the Arabs as such.

Conclusion

Since the end of the British mandate of Palestine and the

establishment of a Jewish state, the region has been plagued with

war, political and financial instability, and religious divide.

Despite these issues, the United States and United Nations, as

well as the Palestinian National Authority and Israel- or so is

said- is attempting to reach a two-state solution in which both

the Palestinians and Israelis will be internationally recognized

as states. Since the negotiations began, progress towards a two-

state solution has been slow and at times even seeming to tread

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in reverse. The United States supports the two-state solution,

and yet when atrocities towards the Palestinian people occur, it

is quick to support the nation that is sends the most military

aid to- Israel. The United Nations also supports the two-state

solution, and yet when the Palestinian National Authority

attempts to have the people of Palestine recognized by the United

Nations General Assembly as a state, it continuously gets

rejected.

Israel stands out among the Middle East not only because

of its religion, but also because of its Westernization and

Zionist democracy. The state of Israel stands as the one of the

only supported democracies within the Middle East, and is allied

and aided by the United States, which stands as one of the most

powerful democracies in the world today. This support from the

West comes at a price for the Israelis, however, and with the

influx of radicalized Islamist terror groups that preach “death

to America” or “Western education is sin,” being an ally of the

West whilst surrounded by those that otherwise do not support

Western ideology is destabilizing in itself. A Jewish state,

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supported by the West, in an Arab Muslim region of the world does

not leave much room for Arab-Israeli peace in the near future.

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