Israel and Palestine: a history of the conflict (briefly). Israel and Palestine: a brief history of the conflict

For a more accurate understanding of the conflict that arose between Israel and Palestine, one should carefully consider its background, the geopolitical location of the countries and the course of conflict actions between the states of Israel and Palestine. The history of the conflict is briefly discussed in this article. The process of confrontation between countries developed for a very long time and in a very interesting way.

Palestine is a small territory of the Middle East. The state of Israel, which was formed in 1948, is located in the same region. Why did Israel and Palestine become enemies? The history of the conflict is very long and contradictory. The roots of the confrontation between them lie in the struggle between Palestinian Arabs and Jews for territorial and ethnic dominance over the region.

Background to the long-term confrontation

Throughout centuries of history, Jews and Arabs coexisted peacefully in Palestine, which was part of the Syrian state during the Ottoman Empire. The indigenous people in the region were Arabs, but at the beginning of the 20th century the Jewish part of the population began to slowly but steadily increase. The situation changed radically after the end of the First World War (1918), when Great Britain received a mandate to administer the territory of Palestine and was able to pursue its policies in these lands.

Zionism and the Balfour Declaration

Widespread colonization of Palestinian lands by Jews began. This was accompanied by the propaganda of the national Jewish ideology - Zionism, which provided for the return of the Jewish people to their homeland - Israel. Evidence of this process is the so-called Balfour Declaration. It is a letter to the leader of the Zionist movement from the British Minister A. Balfour, which was written back in 1917. The Letter justifies the territorial claims of the Jews to Palestine. The declaration was significant; in fact, it started the conflict.

Deepening of the conflict in the 20-40s of the XX century

In the 20s of the last century, the Zionists began to strengthen their positions, the Haganah military association arose, and in 1935 a new, even more extremist organization called the Irgun Zvai Leumi appeared. But the Jews had not yet decided to take radical action; the oppression of the Palestinian Arabs was still carried out peacefully.

After the Nazis came to power, the number of Jews in Palestine began to increase sharply due to their emigration from Europe. In 1938, about 420 thousand Jews lived in the Palestinian lands, which is twice as many as in 1932. The Jews saw the final goal of their resettlement as the complete conquest of Palestine and the creation of a Jewish state. This is evidenced by the fact that after the end of the war, in 1947, the number of Jews in Palestine increased by another 200 thousand, and already reached 620 thousand people.

Israel and Palestine. History of the conflict, attempts at resolution at the international level

In the 50s, the Zionists only strengthened (there were incidents of terror), their ideas about creating a Jewish state received the opportunity to be implemented. In addition, they were actively supported. The year 1945 was characterized by serious tension in relations between Palestine and Israel. The British authorities did not know a way out of this situation, so they turned to the UN General Assembly, which in 1947 took up the decision of the future of Palestine.

The UN saw two ways out of the tense situation. At the department of the newly created international organization, a committee was established that dealt with the affairs of Palestine; it consisted of 11 people. It was proposed to create two independent states in Palestine - Arab and Jewish. And also to form between them a no-man's (international) territory - Jerusalem. This plan of the UN committee was adopted in November 1947 after a long discussion. The plan received serious international recognition, it was approved by both the USA and the USSR, as well as Israel and Palestine directly. The history of the conflict, as everyone expected, was supposed to come to its conclusion.

Terms of the UN resolution to resolve the conflict

According to the UN resolution of November 29, 1947, the territory of Palestine was divided into two independent states - Arab (area 11 thousand sq. km) and Jewish (area 14 thousand sq. km). Separately, as planned, an international zone was created on the territory of the city of Jerusalem. By the beginning of August 1948, the British colonists, according to the plan, were supposed to leave Palestine.

But as soon as the Jewish state was proclaimed, and Ben-Gurion became prime minister, radical Zionists, who did not recognize the independence of the Arab part of the Palestinian lands, began hostilities in May 1948.

Acute phase of the conflict of 1948-1949

What has been the history of conflict in countries like Israel and Palestine? How did the conflict begin? Let's try to give a detailed answer to this question. The declaration of Israeli independence was a very resonant and controversial international event. A lot of Arab-Muslim countries Israel declared “jihad” (holy war against infidels). The Arab League that fought against Israel included Jordan, Lebanon, Yemen, Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Thus, active hostilities began, with Israel and Palestine at the center. The history of the conflict of peoples forced about 300 thousand Palestinian Arabs to leave their native lands even before the start of the tragic military events.

The army of the Arab League was well organized and numbered about 40 thousand soldiers, while Israel had only 30 thousand. The Commander-in-Chief of the League was appointed. It should be noted that the UN called on the parties for peace and even developed a peace plan, but both sides rejected it.

At first, during the fighting in Palestine, the advantage belonged to the Arab League of countries, but in the summer of 1948 the situation changed dramatically. Jewish troops went on the offensive and within ten days repelled the onslaught of the Arabs. And already in 1949, Israel, with a decisive blow, pushed the enemy to the borders of Palestine, thus capturing its entire territory.

Mass emigration of peoples

During the Jewish conquest, approximately a million Arabs were expelled from Palestinian lands. They emigrated to neighboring Muslim countries. The reverse process was the emigration of Jews from the League to Israel. Thus ended the first military clash. This is how countries like Israel and Palestine have had a history of conflict. It is quite difficult to judge who is to blame for the numerous casualties, since both sides were interested in a military solution to the conflict.

Modern relations of states

How do Israel and Palestine live now? How did the conflict end? The question is unanswered, since the conflict is not settled even today. Clashes between states continued throughout the century. This is evidenced by such conflicts as the Sinai (1956) and the Six-Day (1967) wars. Thus, the conflict between Israel and Palestine suddenly arose and developed for a long time.

It should be noted that there was still progress towards achieving peace. An example of this is the negotiations that took place in Oslo in 1993. An agreement was signed between the PLO and the State of Israel to introduce a system of local self-government in the Gaza Strip. Based on these agreements, the following year, 1994, the Palestinian National Authority was founded, which in 2013 was officially renamed the State of Palestine. The creation of this state did not bring the long-awaited peace; the conflict between Arabs and Jews is still far from being resolved, since its roots are very deep and contradictory.

They would become a cementing base. However, these plans were not destined to come true, since a secret agreement in 1916 between Great Britain and France divided Turkey's Arab inheritance.

After the collapse of the Ottoman Empire

After the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, the three nations inhabiting it - Kurds, Armenians and Palestinians - were denied their own state. Arab lands became mandated territories of Great Britain and France (Syria and Lebanon). In 1920, colonial administration of Palestine was established. The British allowed Jews to emigrate to Palestine, but did not allow them to found their own state. This was less than the Zionists wanted, but more than the Arabs were willing to concede. Another British mandate was on the opposite bank of the Jordan River. England's policy in Palestine was characterized by inconsistency and uncertainty, but on the whole the British administration was more inclined to side with the Arabs.

Jewish immigration

Since the beginning of the 20th century. Jews, under the influence of Zionist propaganda, arrived in Palestine, bought land there, and created kibbutzim (communes with an almost complete absence of private property). The majority of the Arab population viewed the arrival of the Zionists as a blessing, since the Jews, with their tenacity and hard work, turned the barren land of Palestine into fertile plantations. This attitude towards the Zionists offended representatives of the local Arab elite, who were proud of their ancient culture and were indignant at the epithet “backward.” With the growing flow of emigrants, the Jewish community became more and more Europeanized, democratic and socialist, while the Arab community remained traditional and patriarchal.

After Hitler came to power, Jewish immigration increased sharply. By 1935, their number in Palestine reached 60 thousand people. Arab resistance increased accordingly, as the Arabs feared that their faith and way of life would be threatened by the increasing number of Jews. The Arabs believed that the claims of the Jews were exorbitant - according to tradition, the possessions of ancient Israel included most of modern Syria and Jordan, as well as the territory of the Egyptian Sinai and modern Israel.

Muhammad Amin al-Husseini

During the Cold War, neither the USSR nor the USA managed to win the Middle Eastern countries to their side. The leaders of the Middle Eastern states were more concerned with their internal and regional problems and used the antagonism between the USSR and the USA to their own advantage. The Soviet Union played an important role in supplying weapons to Israel's main opponents - Egypt, Syria, and Iraq. This, in turn, gave an incentive to the United States and other Western countries to support Israel in its desire to oust the USSR from the world and Middle Eastern arms market. As a result of such competition, the rival Middle Eastern peoples were abundantly supplied with the most modern weapons. The natural consequence of this policy was the transformation of the Middle East into one of the most dangerous places in the world.

Main events of the conflict in the second half of the 20th century

1956 - a combined contingent of British, French and Israeli troops occupied Sinai

The first months of the Arab-Israeli war: 1948

The Middle East was - and still remains - that “pain point” of international relations, which constantly attracts the attention of many countries, including states thousands of kilometers away from this region. The entire post-war period and especially in the 1960s-1970s. The USSR, USA, Britain, and France played an important role in the development of events in the Middle East. In those years, the Middle East, like many other regions of the world, became a testing ground for the Cold War, where rivalry between two military-political forces took place: the West and the USSR. Each of these forces looked for allies among the states of the region, trying to implement their policies through them. However, the countries of the Middle East had their own interests and, choosing one or another military-political bloc as their allies, sought to solve, first of all, their own military-political problems.

First Zionist Congress.

The “Palestinian” or “Middle East” crisis continues to haunt the world not only in the Middle East region to this day. It is based on a dispute between two peoples - Arabs and Jews over the right to own the land of Palestine, on which these peoples have lived side by side since ancient times. However, at the end of the 20th century. Among Jews living in Europe, an opinion developed and then became widespread about the need to create a “permanent Jewish home in Palestine.” In 1897, the First Zionist Congress was held in the Swiss city of Basel, which declared its task to realize the centuries-old dream of all Jews about their own state. The congress was led by the founder of world Zionism, Theodor Herzl.

Britain supports the idea. In order to raise funds for the purchase of land in Palestine, it was organized! Jewish National Fund, and to help Jewish immigrants who decided to go to settlements (kibbutz) in the Holy Land, the Jewish Agency was founded in 1929. Initially, the Jews found supporters in Great Britain, which considered the settlement of Jews in Palestine as a profitable strategic partner for itself in defending the British! interests in the unstable Middle East. However! The famous Balfour Declaration of 1917, which promised the creation of a Jewish state, caused a wave of anti-Jewish pogroms and a rise in anti-British sentiment among the Arab population.

British policy in Palestine since 1920, when Great Britain received a mandate from the League of Nations to administer the territory, has been aimed at encouraging the influx of Jewish settlers.

Ultimately, this led to the fact that with the beginning of the Second World War, the Arabs supported Nazi Germany and fascist Italy in their fight against the allied countries, including Great Britain. An attempt by the British to soften the contradictions by publishing the White Paper in 1939 on Palestine,” which envisaged the introduction of a quota for Jewish migration and its termination in 1944, was rejected by both the Jewish and Arab sides.

Two years after the end of World War II, on February 25, 1947, the British authorities announced that they would bring the issue of Palestine to the UN General Assembly. In May of the same year, the UN Special Committee on Palestine was formed, which recommended the immediate abolition of the British Mandate and the division of Palestine into two independent states - Jewish and Arab, while simultaneously establishing a special international status for the city of Jerusalem.

UN Resolution 1947 The General Assembly made a fateful decision for the two peoples on November 29, 1947, adopting resolution No. 181 by a majority vote, which approved the recommendations of the UN Special Committee. After summing up the voting results, the Syrian delegate prophetically stated: “The tragedy has already begun.... Our land will go through many years of war, and there will be no peace in the Holy Places for several generations to come.”

Militant sentiments of Arabs and Jews. As soon as news of the voting results reached Palestine, they excited the entire people: Jews rejoiced, Arabs were indignant. But both of them understood that they would not disperse peacefully. The head of the unofficial Palestinian government, the Grand Arab Committee, Mufti of the Muslims of Jerusalem, Haj Amin el-Husseini, as well as the head of the Zionist government, David Ben-Gurion, ordered the arming of their supporters. Almost simultaneously, emissaries were sent by both sides to Western Europe to purchase much-needed weapons. And before the arrival of the first shipments of weapons, everyone armed themselves with whatever they could. They used antediluvian rifles from the First World War, Mausers, captured German machine guns and MG-34 machine guns, as well as homemade bombs, armored personnel carriers and Davidka mortars, made by Jews from pipes and firing homemade mines.

The Arabs initially had at their disposal detachments of “Jihad Warriors”, formed from rural militias, unstable numbers, weak discipline, without any familiarity with modern battle tactics, with a complete absence of quartermaster service! medical care and communications.

Decision of the League of Arab States. But the most important thing is that the voices of Muslim brothers were constantly heard on the radio waves that their Arab neighbors would never abandon the Palestinians and would not allow Palestine and El Kodeh (Jerusalem) to fall into the hands of the Zionists. In December 1947, a conference of the heads of the League of Arab States: Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen and Saudi Arabia took place in Cairo. After heated debate, a joint declaration was adopted, which stated that “The League has decided... to prevent the creation! Jewish State and to defend the integrity of Palestine as an Arab State, one and indivisible." It was further stated that the states of the League would jointly allocate 10 thousand guns, 3 thousand volunteers and 1 million pounds sterling to a single fund for the defense of Arab Palestine to financially support the fighting! operations. Iraqi General Ismail Safuat was also appointed to the post of commander in chief of the future Arab coalition forces.

Jewish strategy. The strategy of the Jews' actions in this situation was formulated by their leader D. Ben-Gurion. In Jerusalem, as throughout Palestine, it was simple: everything that Jews hold in their hands must be preserved. No Jew could leave his home, kibbutz, farm or workplace without permission. Every outpost, every settlement or village, no matter how isolated, had to be defended as if it were Tel Aviv itself. And since the Arabs immediately began to declare that they would not recognize the new borders of a divided Palestine, then, in the words of Ben-Gurion, “this will allow us to take actions and achieve results that we would never have achieved in any other way. We will have the right to take everything we can.”

The Haganah fighters start first. Jewish militants from the underground army of the Haganah did not wait for the Arabs to attack, but were the first to strike, starting a series of terrorist attacks in Jerusalem, the victims of which were the civilian Arab population. On the night of January 1, 1948, in the Arab quarter of Katamon, which separated two Jewish quarters from the main place of Jewish settlement in the New City, Jewish militants blew up eight residential buildings at once. The goal - to intimidate and force the Arabs to leave their homes - was successful.

On January 4, Jewish militants from the Haganah blew up the Semiramis Hotel: 37 Arab guests were killed and dozens were wounded. In response, the Arabs, with the help of the Jihad Warriors, cut off communications with the Jewish Quarter in the Old City, isolating it from the Jews living in the New City. In response to complaints from the Jewish Agency to the British authorities, they offered to evacuate the problem area, but were refused. After this, the British agreed to send one convoy there per week.

In addition to the Haganah group, the Jews had a number of other militant groups, such as the Irgun and Stern, which were also involved in the implementation! policies of "terror and intimidation". They were perfect! a series of terrorist attacks in crowded places, in areas densely populated by Arabs. For example, on January 7, right in the center of the Arab quarter of Jerusalem, next to a bus stop, they threw a 200-liter barrel filled with TNT, bolts, nails and nuts from a van - 17 people died on the spot, dozens were injured.

"War on the roads." The Arabs again did not remain in debt. Militants from the Jihad Warriors organization began a “war on the roads” against the Jews. Now no car could pass safely along the Tel Aviv-Jerusalem road. To supply Jerusalem with everything necessary, Jews had to form convoys of a dozen vehicles under the cover of armored vehicles armed with machine guns. At the same time, the Arabs also switched to terrorist tactics. On February 22, the largest terrorist attack was carried out in the very center of Jerusalem on Ben Yehuda Street. This time the explosives were delivered in three military trucks, which were parked in three places: the Amdurski, Vilenchik hotels and a simple large residential building. As a result of the explosion, 57 Jews were killed and 88 wounded. And on March 11, Arab militants managed to blow up the most guarded object of the Jews! in Jerusalem - the building of the Jewish Agency. The explosion killed 13 people and injured 87.

And two weeks later, on March 24, the Jews learned another unpleasant news for them. For the first time since November 29, 1947, a convoy of 40 vehicles, covered by armored vehicles, failed to reach Jerusalem. As a result of the Jihad Warriors' ambush, the Jews lost 19 vehicles, including 16 food trucks and 3 armored vehicles. This caused slight panic in the Jewish leadership, which met for a special meeting on March 29. D. Bep-Gurion spoke at it, saying: “Now we have three vitally important Jewish centers - Tel Aviv, Haifa and Jerusalem. We can survive even if we lose one of them, provided that it is not Jerusalem.” At the meeting, an operation plan was adopted to unblock the Bab el-Oued pass with 1,500 Haganah fighters. The operation was given the name "Nah-son".

The commander of the Harel assault brigade, Yitzhak Rabiy, summed up the goals set for his unit: “not to leave any stone unturned in the villages, to expel the entire population from there... Having lost them, the gangs of robbers will be paralyzed.”

Operation Nachson at its first stage involved the occupation of the Arab village of Kastel, which controlled the entrance to Jerusalem. On the night of April 3, 180 special forces soldiers from the Palmach brigade easily overpowered a small local self-defense detachment and occupied the village. Moreover, its entire population fled from there. Shortly after noon, the Arab Jihad Warriors made their first unsuccessful assault attempt. Clashes around the village of Kastel continued until April 9 with varying success. The village passed from hand to hand until the Arabs on April 9 abandoned the idea of recapturing it.

The capture of Castel led to the opening of the Bab el-Oued pass, and on April 6 the first convoy from Tel Aviv arrived in Jerusalem.

To secure the pass for themselves, Jewish units carried out a “cleansing” of the surrounding Arab villages from their inhabitants. The Arab population fled, their villages were destroyed. During one of these “cleansing operations,” on April 9, militants from the Irgun and Stern brigades carried out a massacre of the civilian population of the village of Deir Yassin, killing all its inhabitants - 254 men, women, children and old people.

Despite official apologies from the Jewish Agency and D. Ben-Gurion personally, the news of the events in Deir Yassin shocked the entire world community. The Arab "response" was no less terrible. On April 13 in Jerusalem, on the Hadassarroad road, which connected the Jewish quarters and passed through the Arab quarter of Sheikh Jerrah, Arab militants attacked a Jewish convoy of ten cars. As a result of the attack, 75 Jews were killed, mostly doctors and medical personnel, traveling in armored buses, which were set on fire and thrown with Molotov cocktails. All bus passengers were burned alive.

Against the background of the intensification of Arab militants, the next conference of the League of Arab States was held in Cairo. It adopted a plan for the offensive of Arab armies in Palestine on three fronts. Iraqi tanks, with the support of troops from Syria, Lebanon and the Liberation Army, formed from volunteers, were supposed to cut the country in two, reach the Mediterranean Sea and capture the city of Haifa. The Egyptian army, advancing from the west, was supposed to occupy Jaffa, and then Tel Aviv itself. The central part of the country was to be occupied by the regiments of the Arab Legion and the Jihad Warriors. Moreover, everyone present was sure that “there will be no war anyway. There will be our parade in Tel Aviv, which we will take in two weeks.”

In this state, the parties approached May 14, 1948, when the British Mandate for Palestine expired and British troops were withdrawn from it. On May 14, 1948, Jews proclaimed the creation of the State of Israel. Tel Aviv became its capital. The Arab states, which did not agree with this formulation of the issue, launched a joint offensive in Palestine on May 15.

Fighting for Jerusalem

So, the Arab states did not recognize the legitimacy of the new Jewish state. They immediately began to fight. The number of combat-ready units fielded by the Arabs could not be compared with the size of their population. In total, they sent about 20 thousand soldiers to the front. The Arab commanders were so confident of an imminent victory that they did not bother to take care of even such simple things as logistics services. Despite the fact that Egypt and Syria had the most numerous armies, they were unable to play the role that was assigned to them. In fact, these armies exhausted all their potential in initial attacks that did not lead to the accomplishment of their objectives. The Syrian and Lebanese armies remained standing on their borders. The most combat-ready units were the Jordanian units, the backbone of which was the Arab Legion: 7 thousand well-trained soldiers, divided into four mechanized regiments. The legionnaires had powerful weapons in their hands, even heavy ones: 55 mm anti-tank guns, 88 mm howitzers, about 50 armored vehicles and armored personnel carriers with 37 mm guns.

The Israeli army, which as such appeared only in June 1948, consisted of numerous well-trained underground formations of the Haganah, and amounted to about 20 thousand fighters. Thus, neither side had an advantage in terms of numbers. However, the Israelis had no guns, tanks, or planes, which in this case gave a clear advantage to their opponents.

The beginning of the battle for Jerusalem. According to both sides, the outcome of the war was to be decided in the battle for Jerusalem, where the main events of this war took place. Street fighting, according to all the rules of military art, began on May 15. Palestinian Jihad Warriors attacked the Jewish positions, driving the enemy away from the Zion Gate, which provided the only possible link to the New City. In one day, the Haganah immediately lost a quarter of its territory in the Old City, where the Jewish Quarter became isolated from the rest of the Jewish part of the New City.

The Haganah headquarters developed Operation Fourche - an assault on the bastions of the Old City and the release of the Jewish Quarter. By the evening of May 17, preparations were completed. The plan was as follows: Nathan Lorch's strike force took up positions opposite the Jaffa Gate. The armored detachment of D. Nevo was supposed to provide cover for the sappers, who, for their part, were supposed to blow up the gate.

On the night of May 18, three armored cars and an armored bus with sappers began moving towards the gate, but came under heavy fire from the Arabs. Having lost an armored bus and an armored car, the Jews were forced to retreat.

On May 18, units of the 4th Mechanized Regiment of the Arab Legion under the command of the talented Jordanian Major Abdalsh Tell came to the aid of the Jihad Warriors who had entered into fierce street battles. Instead of indiscriminate and unorganized attacks by the Jihad Warriors, a plan of methodical pressure on the enemy began to be implemented, displacing and capturing its strategic positions. To save his soldiers, Tell insisted on the active use of artillery.

Tell's methodical plan began to work. The commander of the Haganah units in Jerusalem, D. Shaltiel, assessed the situation at the end of May as critical. The situation of the Jews in the Holy City was also complicated by the fact that Arab units again blocked the passage of convoys from Tel Aviv, capturing the city of Latrouna, in the very center of the Bab el-Oued pass. The threat of starvation loomed over Jerusalem.

Events of May 26. Since Tel Aviv did not have any free units, Ben-Gurioi decided to form them specifically for the assault on the “Latrun Castle”. The 79th Mechanized Battalion was formed from 20 vehicles, hastily sheathed in metal sheets, and a dozen half-track armored hawtrucks. Also formed from immigrants who had just arrived in Israel from Eastern Europe - Poland, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Romania and Russia - was the 72nd Infantry Battalion of 450 men.

Jewish units began their attack at midnight on May 26. The frontal attack on the fortified positions of the Arab Legion ended in complete failure. Using dug-in guns and machine guns, the Arabs literally shot the Jews, who lost 220 people in this attack.

May 26 was generally a good day for the Arabs. So, in the north, after five days of fighting, the Syrian army occupied kibbutz Yad Mordechai, and in the south, the Egyptians finally captured Ramat Rachel, thereby joining the front with the Jordanian army near Jerusalem.

On May 27, at the general council of Arab commanders in Jerusalem, a decision was made to storm the Jewish Quarter, which, as it later turned out, was defended by only 35 Haganah militants under the leadership of Moshe Russnak. The only obstacle to establishing control over the quarter was the synagogue, which dominated the area.

Surrender on May 28. On the morning of May 27, the Arabs launched an assault and by noon captured the synagogue, which the Jihad Warriors blew up. This decided the outcome of the battle for two thousand residents of the Jewish Quarter.

The next morning the rabbis asked for surrender. The conditions proposed by the Arabs were simple: all children, old people and women (even those who were Hagai militants) were allowed to leave the Old City, only men of military age would be detained as prisoners of war. Thus, on May 28, 1,700 civilians left the Jewish Quarter and 290 men were sent to camps in Jordan.

Attempt to storm Latruna. On the evening of May 30, the Israelis made another attempt to storm Latrouna. 13 armored personnel carriers and 22 armored vehicles were thrown into the battle. However, targeted fire from anti-tank guns forced the Jews to retreat again, losing five armored personnel carriers.

Having suffered another failure at Latrouna, the Israeli leadership began a heroic attempt to build an alternative section of the road bypassing Latrouna on the Beit Jiz - Beit Susin section. For several nights, in three shifts, several dozen workers worked on the construction of the “road of life”, achieving another feat.

Truce plans. The complicated situation on the fronts forced the Israeli leadership to look for ways to establish a truce. Ben-Gurion, on behalf of his government, turned to the UN representative in Palestine, Swedish Count Folke Bernadotte, with a request to mediate in concluding a truce. On June 7, Bernadotte submitted a truce plan to both sides for discussion. Israel immediately accepted it, and the Arabs gathered in Amman to discuss it, where, after heated discussions, they also adopted a plan for a truce for four weeks until July 9.

By coincidence, on June 10, when the truce came into force, the defenders of Jewish Jerusalem ran out of food. And on July 1, the first convoy from Tel Aviv arrived in the city. The Jews, who were on the brink of disaster, perked up. They were saved, apparently, from above.

During the three weeks of the truce, the civil and military authorities of Israel were able to decisively change the situation on the fronts in their favor.

Weapons for Israel. The first weapons began to arrive illegally from Europe. On June 15, the first 10 75 mm guns, 12 Hodges light tanks, 19 65 mm anti-tank guns, 4 anti-aircraft guns and 45 thousand shells were unloaded in Haifa. Other shipments of weapons followed: 500 light machine guns, several thousand rifles, 17 thousand shells, 7 million rounds of ammunition and 30 M-48 Sherman tanks. At the same time, in the Negev desert, the Israelis, in secret from the Arabs, created their own air force from smuggled aircraft: 20 Messerschmitt-109 fighters, five P-5 Mustangs and several Spitfires. On June 29, the creation of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) was announced and additional mobilization was carried out into it.

Military difficulties for the Arabs. The Arabs were unable to reap the benefits of the truce. They failed to overcome the UN moratorium on arms supplies to the warring parties. They failed not only to purchase heavy weapons, but also to replenish their ammunition arsenals. In principle, there were enough guns and howitzers, but there was nothing to shoot from them.

At the end of June, Bernadotte proposed extending the truce, but this proposal was rejected by the Arabs. Despite the fact that the Egyptians and Iraqis each fielded an additional 10 thousand soldiers, the number of coalition troops was already inferior to the Israeli army, which numbered 50 thousand people.

Israel is pushing back the Arabs. On the morning of July 9, a flurry of Israeli attacks broke out in all directions. In the north, they captured important positions around the cities of Shefaram and Nazareth. The attacks on Jetshin were, however, repulsed, and the city remained in the hands of the Arabs. But the most strategically important success the Israelis achieved was in the attack on the cities of Lod (Lydda) and Ramla. It was here that the Israelis began the overt practice of expelling Arabs from their villages and homes.

New truce. Less than a week had passed before the Arabs themselves requested a truce. Through the mediation of UN Secretary General Trygve Lie, the truce began on July 17. The UN, through Count Bernadotte, proposed its plan for resolving the conflict, according to which the Negev desert was transferred to the Egyptians. And while Israel expressed its disagreement through official channels, militants from Stern on September 17, in the very center of Jerusalem, made a successful attempt on Bernadotte’s life.

New Israeli offensive. On October 15, with the end of the truce, the IDF launched a new massive offensive. As a result of brutal attacks, the Israelis captured Fort Iraq Svidan near Ashkalon, and then rushed to Beersheba, which they captured on October 22. Meanwhile, in the north, during Operation Hayarem, the entire Galilee was cleared of Syrian and Liberation Army troops. The IDF reached the border with Lebanon and Syria.

A series of truces with Arab countries. In November 1948, a truce was concluded with Jordan. In January 1949, negotiations with Egypt began, ending in success on February 24 of the same year.

On March 1, negotiations began with Lebanon and Jordan. And while they were walking, the Israeli army carried out its last military operation in this war: on March 10, Ei Lat was taken without a fight, providing Israel with access to the Gulf of Aqaba and the Red Sea.

Meanwhile, during March-June 1949, a number of bilateral armistice agreements were signed. Open hostilities have ended. But this was not the peace that follows war, but just a truce. According to the Arabs, “the state of war did not cease.”

Results of the war. The results of the war did not suit either side. Despite the fact that Israel lost only 6,373 people killed in it, it failed to establish control over Jerusalem. 500-900 thousand Arab refugees flooded the surrounding Arab countries, creating refugee camps there. The Arabs lost 1,300 square kilometers of their lands, hundreds of villages were destroyed.

The Arabs failed to destroy Israel. Moreover, he occupied part of Arab Palestine. Its remaining territories were divided between Egypt and Jordan.

Thus, the Palestinian Arabs were unable to create their own state.

USSR hopes for Israel and their failure

The USSR and its allies in Eastern Europe at the session of the UN General Assembly in 1947 advocated the division of Palestine. The Soviet representative to the UN A. A. Gromyko supported the “desire of the Jews to create their own state.” In May 1948, the Soviet Union was the first to recognize Israel and establish diplomatic relations with it. During the Arab-Israeli war of 1948-1949, the USSR supplied weapons to Israel (officially, arms supplies were allegedly carried out by Czechoslovakia).

Support for Israel was explained by the hope of the Soviet leadership to turn the Jewish state, many of whose citizens had Russian roots, into its outpost in the Middle East. Other routes to penetration into the strategically important Middle East were closed to the USSR in those years: the Arab world was entirely oriented toward Great Britain. In Israel, the Soviet Union, which saved the Jews from final destruction, and Stalin personally were treated enthusiastically.

And yet, the expectation that Israel would become a vehicle for Soviet influence in the region did not materialize. Leading Israeli politicians took a pro-American position. This was explained both by their democratic views and by the financial support provided to Israel by the United States and American Jewish organizations. Israel counted on mass immigration of Jews, and the Soviet leadership categorically did not agree to allow free emigration of Soviet Jews.

Already in 1949, relations between the USSR and Israel began to rapidly deteriorate.

Arab-Israeli conflict

The Arab-Israeli conflict is a confrontation between a number of Arab countries, as well as Arab paramilitary radical groups supported by part of the indigenous Arab population of the Israeli-controlled (occupied) Palestinian territories, on the one hand, and the Zionist movement, and then the State of Israel, on the other. Although the State of Israel was only created in 1948, the history of the conflict actually spans about a century, starting at the end of the 19th century, when the political Zionist movement was created, marking the beginning of the Jewish struggle for their own state.

Arab countries (Lebanon, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Egypt, Iraq and other Arab countries) and the Jewish state of Israel participated and are participating in the conflict. During the conflicts, many truce agreements were concluded between different countries, but the conflict still continued and every year it became more and more aggressive on the part of both the Jews and the Arabs. New reasons for war and goals in it are emerging. But the most important goal of the Arabs is the creation of a sovereign state in Palestine, which should have been created after the UN resolution of November 29, 1947.

Within the framework of the large-scale Arab-Israeli conflict, it is customary to single out the regional Palestinian-Israeli conflict, caused, first of all, by the clash of territorial interests of Israel and the indigenous Arab population of Palestine. In recent years, it is this conflict that has been the source of political tension and open armed clashes in the region.

Causes of the conflict

When identifying the complex of reasons that gave rise to the conflict, it is necessary to note the following:

Historical-territorial (claims of Palestinian Arabs and Jews to the same land and different interpretations of the history of these territories);

Religious (existence of common or nearby shrines);

Economic (blockade of strategic trade routes);

International legal (failure by the parties to comply with decisions of the UN and other international organizations);

International political (at different stages they manifested themselves in the interest of various world centers of power in catalyzing the conflict).

Historical roots of the conflict

Arab-Israeli conflict

Historical roots of the conflict

Palestine is a territory with an ancient history. Around the 11th century. BC. Ancient Jewish tribes began to penetrate into the territory of Palestine and created their own states here (the kingdoms of Israel and Judah). Later, Palestine was part of the states of the Achaemenids, Alexander the Great, Ptolemies and Seleucids, and was a province of Rome and Byzantium. Under the Romans, the oppressed Jewish population was dispersed to other countries in the Mediterranean region, and some were assimilated with the local Christian population. In 638, Palestine was conquered by the Arabs, and it became one of the provinces of the caliphate called al-Falastin. It was during this period that the territory of the country began to be populated by Arab peasant fellahs. Muslim rule in Palestine lasted almost 1000 years. In 1260-1516. Palestine is a province of Egypt. Since 1516, this territory was part of the Ottoman Empire, being part of either the Damascus vilayet or the Beirut vilayet. Since 1874, the region of Jerusalem has been allocated in the Ottoman Empire, governed directly from Istanbul. In 1917, during the First World War, Palestine was occupied by British troops and became (from 1920 to 1947) a British mandate. At the beginning of the 20th century. Palestine began to be perceived by international Jewish circles, organized at the first Zionist congress in Basel in 1897, as a hotbed of Jewish statehood. The Zionist organization began to take practical steps to Jewishize the country. During this period, the construction of Jewish cities and settlements was underway (cities such as Tel Aviv - 1909, Ramat Gan - 1921, Herzliya / Herzliya / - 1924, Netanya - 1929 were created), the flow of Jewish immigrants from Europe, America, Asia, and Africa. In Palestine, which was already largely overpopulated and lacking free land and water resources, conflicts began to flare up between the Arabs who had taken root here almost fifteen hundred years ago and the arriving Jews.

The idea of creating separate Arab and Jewish states in Palestine first emerged in the 1930s. In 1937, a British royal commission proposed a plan to divide the mandate territory into three parts. The first, covering the territory of northern Palestine, including Galilee and part of the coastal strip, was intended for the Jewish state. The second sector, which occupied Samaria, the Negev, the southern part of the right bank of the Jordan, as well as the cities of Tel Aviv and Jaffa territorially separated from them, was supposed to serve for the creation of an Arab state. Finally, the third sector, according to the commission's plans, was to remain under the neutral mandate of Great Britain. This sector, along with the Judean Mountains, which have an important strategic position, includes shrines of Muslim, Jewish and Christian culture: Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Nazareth. The outbreak of World War II prevented the implementation of this plan. After the end of the World War, the question of the division of Palestine was revived. Jewish organizations recalled the horrors of the Holocaust and demanded the immediate proclamation of the State of Israel. The scheme for the partition of Palestine proposed by the UN in 1947 was very different from the plans for the pre-war political reorganization of the region. According to UN General Assembly Resolution No. 181, the Jewish state significantly increased its area at the expense of Arab territories in the south. From the neutral international zone, under which 1/10 of the territory of Palestine was originally supposed to be allocated, only a small enclave remained, including Jerusalem and Bethlehem with the nearest suburbs. This territory was to be administered by the UN administration with the help of a special elected body and be completely demilitarized. The planned territory of the Jewish state included three, and the Arab - four unconnected sections of territory. The UN resolution violated ethnic parity. The territory of the Jewish state, due to the desert spaces of the Negev, turned out to be larger than the Arab one, which did not correspond to the ethnic picture of post-war Palestine: in 1946, there were only 678 thousand Jews for 1,269 thousand Arabs.

In Palestine, the only Jewish state was created - Israel (1948). Peaceful coexistence on the same land of two states hostile to each other with different religious and cultural foundations, with vaguely defined artificial borders, was impossible.

This is one of the longest regional conflicts of our time, lasting more than 60 years. In general, the history of the conflict can be divided into several key stages: the Arab-Israeli war of 1948 (first war), the Suez crisis of 1956 (second war), the Arab-Israeli wars of 1967 and 1973. (3rd and 4th Arab-Israeli Wars), Camp David Peace Process 1978-79, Lebanon War 1982 (Fifth War), Peace Process 1990s (Camp David Accords 2000) and The 2000 Intifada, which began on September 29, 2000, is often referred to by experts as the “sixth war” or “war of attrition.”

The first war broke out immediately after the declaration of independence of the State of Israel on May 14, 1948. Armed contingents of five Arab countries: Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon occupied a number of territories in the southern and eastern parts of Palestine, reserved by UN decisions for the Arab state. Then the Arabs occupied the Jewish quarter in Old Jerusalem. The Israelis, meanwhile, took control of the strategically important road leading from the coast to Jerusalem, passing through the Judean Mountains. By the beginning of 1949, armed forces were able to occupy the Negev up to the former Egyptian-Palestinian border, with the exception of the narrow coastal strip of the Gaza Strip; this strip remained under Egyptian control and it is now usually called the Gaza Strip, although according to the UN decision of 1947, the Arab Gaza Strip should be much larger in area. The Jordanian army managed to gain a foothold in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. The part of the West Bank occupied by the Jordanian army began to be considered part of the Jordanian state. The February-July 1949 negotiations, which led to a truce between Israel and the Arab countries, fixed the temporary border between the opposing sides at the lines of military contact in early 1949.

The second war broke out seven years later. Under the pretext of protecting the Suez Canal, nationalized by the Egyptian government, which was previously owned by European companies, Israel sent its troops into the Sinai Peninsula. Five days after the start of the conflict, Israeli tank columns captured the Gaza Strip, or rather, what was left of it to the Arabs after 1948-1949, occupied most of the Sinai and reached the Suez Canal. In December, following a joint Anglo-French intervention against Egypt, UN troops were deployed to the conflict area. Israeli military forces withdrew from Sinai and the Gaza Strip in March 1957.

The third war, called the Six Day War due to its transience, took place from June 5 to 10, 1967. The reason for it was the intensification of bombing of Israeli military targets by Syrian aircraft in early 1967. During the Six Day War, Israel practically destroyed the Egyptian air force and established its hegemony in the air. The war cost the Arabs the loss of control over East Jerusalem, the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, Sinai and the Golan Heights on the Israeli-Syrian border.

Periodic armed clashes that followed the Six-Day War gave way to a new escalation of the conflict on October 6, 1973. On the day of the Jewish religious holiday Yom Kippur, Israeli army units were attacked by Egypt in the Suez Canal area. The Israelis managed to break into Syria and encircle the Egyptian Third Army there. Another strategic success of Tel Aviv was crossing the Suez Canal and establishing its presence on its western bank. Israel and Egypt signed an armistice agreement in November, which was sealed with peace accords on January 18, 1974. These documents provided for the withdrawal of Israeli forces from the Sinai territory west of the Mitla and Gidi passes in exchange for a reduction in Egypt's military presence in the Suez Canal zone. UN peacekeeping forces were deployed between the two opposing armies.

On March 26, 1979, Israel and Egypt signed a peace treaty at Camp David (USA), which ended the state of war that had existed between the two countries for 30 years. In accordance with the Camp David agreements, Israel returned the entire Sinai Peninsula to Egypt, and Egypt recognized Israel's right to exist. The two states established diplomatic relations with each other. The Camp David agreements cost Egypt expulsion from the Organization of the Islamic Conference and the Arab League, and its president Anwar Sadat - his life.

On June 5, 1982, tensions increased between the Israelis and the Palestinians who had taken refuge in Lebanon. It resulted in the fifth Arab-Israeli war, during which Israel bombed Beirut and areas of southern Lebanon where Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) militant camps were concentrated. By June 14, Israeli ground forces went deep into Lebanon to the outskirts of Beirut, which was surrounded by them. After massive Israeli shelling of West Beirut, the PLO evacuated its armed forces from the city. Israeli troops left West Beirut and most of Lebanon by June 1985. Only a small area in southern Lebanon remained under Israeli control. On the night of May 23-24, 2000, under pressure from international peacekeeping organizations and taking into account the opinion of its citizens who did not want to pay with the lives of soldiers for a military presence on foreign territory, Israel completely withdrew its troops from southern Lebanon.

At the end of the 80s, real prospects for a peaceful exit from the protracted Middle East conflict emerged. The Palestinian popular uprising (intifada) that broke out in the occupied territories in December 1987 forced the Israeli authorities to resort to searching for a compromise. On July 31, 1988, King Hussein of Jordan announced the termination of administrative and other ties of his country with the West Bank of Jordan; in November 1988, the independence of the State of Palestine was proclaimed. In September 1993, with the mediation of the United States and Russia, a declaration was signed in Washington, opening up new ways to resolve the crisis. In this document, Israel agreed to the organization of the Palestinian National Authority (but not a state), and the PLO recognized Israel's right to exist. In accordance with the Washington Declaration, an agreement was signed in May 1994 on the gradual introduction of Palestinian self-government in the West Bank and Gaza Strip over a five-year transition period (initially in the Gaza Strip and the city of Ariha (Jericho) in the West Bank). In the subsequent period of time, the territory over which the PNA began to exercise its jurisdiction gradually expanded. In May 1999, when the temporary status of the PNA expired, the Palestinians tried a second time - and on more serious grounds - to declare their independence, but were forced to abandon this decisive step under pressure from the international community.

Overall, the five Arab-Israeli wars demonstrated that neither side could decisively defeat the other. This was largely due to the involvement of the parties to the conflict in the global confrontation of the Cold War. The situation in terms of conflict resolution changed qualitatively with the collapse of the USSR and the disappearance of the bipolar world.

Changes in the world have led to the fact that the Arab-Israeli confrontation has emerged from the system of global confrontation between the USSR and the USA. In the process of resolving the conflict, significant positive changes emerged, which were evidenced, in particular, by the Palestinian-Israeli agreements in Oslo in 1992 (the main point of which was the gradual transfer by Israel of the West Bank and Gaza Strip to self-government to Palestinian representatives), the Jordanian-Israeli peace treaty 1994, Syrian-Israeli peace negotiations 1992-1995 etc.

In general, the late 80s and early 90s were marked by dramatic changes in the process of peaceful settlement of the Middle East conflict. The “crown” of the entire process was Israel’s recognition of the PLO as a representative of the Palestinian people, as well as the exclusion from the Palestine Charter of the clause denying Israel’s right to exist.

However, starting in mid-1996, the dynamics of the negotiation process and Palestinian-Israeli relations changed for the worse. This was due to internal political changes in Israel and the problems of building a Palestinian state. At the same time, the culmination of this period was the visit in September 2000 of the leader of the opposition right-wing Likud party Ariel Sharon to Jerusalem, where he made a provocative statement in which he stated that he “will use all democratic means to prevent the division of Jerusalem,” in a response to Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, who proposed dividing Jerusalem into two parts: Western - Israeli and Eastern - Arab. With this provocative speech, the Intifada 2000 began, which marked the beginning of the modern Middle East crisis.

Positions of the parties

Position of supporters of Israel

The Zionist movement, on the basis of which the State of Israel was created, sees Palestine as the historical homeland of the Jewish people, and proceeds from the assertion that these people have the right to their own sovereign state. This statement is based on several basic principles:

The principle of equality of peoples: like other peoples who have their own sovereign state, Jews also have the right to live in and govern their own country.

The principle of the need to protect Jews from anti-Semitism : a phenomenon of anti-Semitism that culminated in the targeted genocide against Jews ( Holocaust), carried out Nazi Germany in the first half 1940s years, forces Jews to organize for self-defense and find territory that would serve as a refuge in the event of a repetition of the disaster. This is only possible with the creation of a Jewish state.

The principle of the historical homeland: as numerous anthropological and archaeological studies show, in Palestine since XIII century BC e. Jewish tribes lived from the 11th to the 6th centuries BC. e. There were Jewish states. The predominant presence of Jews in this territory continued after the conquest of the last Jewish state of antiquity, Judea, by the Babylonian kingNebuchadnezzar II , over the next centuries with the alternate transfer of lands from hand to hand, and until the uprising Bar Kochba in 132 n. e., after which a significant number of Jews were expelled from the country by the Romans. But even after this expulsion until the 5th century AD. e. Jewish majority remained in Galilee . In Judaism, this territory is called “Eretz Israel”, which means “Land of Israel”. It was promised to Jacob (Israel) by God as the Promised Land that He intended for the Jews. Since the emergence of the Jewish people, one of the fundamental ideas preached by Judaism has been the connection of this people with the land of Israel.

A group of public organizations representing the interests of Jews,expelled from Arab countries in the 1948-1970s, whose descendants make up up to 40% of the Israeli population , believes that the territories acquired by Jews in Israel are disproportionately less than the real estate they lost during the expulsion, and the material losses of Palestinians driven from their lands are also less than the losses of expelled Jews.

The position of Israel's opponents

Arabic states and local Arabs were initially categorically against the creation of the state of Israel in Palestine.
Radical political and terrorist movements, as well as the governments of some countries, fundamentally deny Israel's right to exist.
With the tendency of strengthening fundamentalist sentiments in the Arab world since the second half XX century, the Arab position is complemented by the spread of the religious belief that this territory is part of the original Muslim lands.
Opponents and critics Israel believe that the policy of this state in the occupied territories turned into racism and apartheid , gradually depriving the Palestinians of their land and grossly violating their rights.

Stages of confrontation

Analysis of the dynamics of the conflict allowed us to identify 4 main stages of the confrontation.

At the first stage (before May 14, 1948), the conflict was purely local. It is very difficult to identify specific subjects of the confrontation, because in each camp there were forces tuned to both dialogue and confrontation. In general, responsibility for the escalation of tensions at this stage, in our opinion, should be relatively equally divided between the parties. But it should also be noted that the Jewish leaders were initially more willing to compromise and peaceful (as embodied in public statements and the Declaration of Independence).

The next stage lasted from the beginning of the 1948 war to the end of the 1973 war. This period of confrontation became the bloodiest, and it can confidently be called the core of the confrontation. During these 25 years, five (!) full-scale military clashes occurred. All of them were won by Israel. The wars were either started or instigated to varying degrees by Arab states. There was no systematic peace process during this period (with the exception of extremely rare post-war peace negotiations).

The third stage of the conflict (from 1973 to 1993) is characterized by the beginning of the peace process, a series of strategic negotiations and peace agreements (Camp David, Oslo). Here, some Arab states changed their positions and entered into peace negotiations with Israel. However, the positive attitude was somewhat overshadowed by the 1982 war in Lebanon.

The current stage of the conflict dates back to 1994. The military confrontation moved into the area of terrorism and anti-terrorist operations. The peace process has become systemic, but far from completely successful. Resolving the conflict has become an international task, which has involved international mediators in the process of peaceful settlement. At this stage, all participants in the conflict (with the exception of some radical terrorist groups) finally realized the need for a peaceful way to resolve the conflict.

Current events

On November 27, 2007, Ehud Olmert and Mahmoud Abbas agreed to begin negotiations and reach a final agreement on a Palestinian state by the end of 2008. However, this was not possible; negotiations were interrupted at the end of December 2008 due to Israel’s Operation Cast Lead in the Gaza Strip against the Hamas group. Israel explained Operation Cast Lead by the need to stop years of rocket attacks from Gaza, which killed more than 1,300 Palestinians and 14 Israelis.

In 2009, negotiations with Fatah continued with the participation of the new Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the new US President Barack Obama. On June 21, Netanyahu presented his plan for a Middle East settlement, within the framework of which he agreed to the creation of a Palestinian state with limited rights, in the event that the Palestinians recognize Israel as the national home of the Jewish people and receive security guarantees for Israel, including international ones.

In November 2009, the Israeli government announced a ten-month moratorium on construction in Jewish settlements in the West Bank, but this moratorium did not satisfy the Palestinian side because it did not apply to East Jerusalem.

On September 2, 2010, direct negotiations between the PNA and the Israeli government were resumed. However, these negotiations are in jeopardy due to contradictions in

the Israeli government regarding the extension of the moratorium on settlement construction, and due to the reluctance of the Palestinian Authority to continue direct negotiations if the moratorium is not extended.

The current stage of development of the conflict.

Since 1987, Palestine has been rocked by pogroms and bloodshed. It all started with the Intifada on December 7 of that year. Then Palestinian Arabs held demonstrations in the Gaza Strip. The reason was the twenty-year occupation of the Palestinian territories. The Israelis staged an armed suppression of the Intifada. As the International Red Cross announced in 1990, more than 800 Palestinians were killed by Jews and more than 16,000 were arrested. The intifada had a negative impact on the Israeli economy, with budget cuts leading to significant unemployment [11].

On November 15, 1988, the PLO proclaimed the creation of the State of Palestine with Jerusalem as its capital, after this event the peace process in the Middle East began. To strengthen peace, the Madrid Middle East Peace Conference was held in 1991, at the initiative of the United States and the USSR. On Thursday, September 28, 2000, Ariel Sharon announced that he had no intention of dividing Jerusalem into Arab and Jewish parts. This remark sparked violence in Jerusalem from September 29 to October 6. Palestinian youth threw stones at police. By the end of the first day, more than 200 people had been wounded and 4 Palestinians had been killed. The next day, Israeli police began storming the Muslim part of Jerusalem. More than 80 Palestinians were killed. On October 4, a meeting was held between Arafat and the new Israeli Prime Minister Bakr, but no agreement was signed. The situation in Palestine and on the Lebanese-Israeli border was heating up. Several Israeli soldiers were kidnapped by Hezbollah.

War and its consequences

Now, as in 1982, there was only one force left in Lebanon from which the Israeli authorities want to get rid of - Hezbollah.

The war began on July 12, 2006, with an Israeli army attack on Lebanon. At first glance, the purpose of the war is the return of two kidnapped Israeli soldiers, but then it becomes clear that the United States is behind this war and the real goal is to drag Iran and Syria into the war.

The Israeli army carried out a naval and air blockade of Lebanon. Every day, the IDF launched rocket attacks throughout Lebanon, resulting in numerous civilian casualties. As in the first war, Israel's only enemy was Hezbollah. This time, Israeli forces were not able to penetrate far; no one expected such a strong response from Hezbollah. Israel bombed all of Lebanon from the air when the Shiite organization bombed northern Israel with its missiles, including the second most economically developed Israeli city, Haifa. Hezbollah killed more than 160 Israeli military personnel, when Israel had only 80 Hezbollah militants and about 1000 Lebanese civilians (that is, more than 70% of the killed Lebanese were civilians, these figures once again prove to us the cruelty of the Israeli military). On August 11, the UN issued a ceasefire resolution and on August 14, the war ended with the victory of Hezbollah. 5,000 UN soldiers were sent to the conflict territory. Israeli Chief of General Staff Dan Halutz said that “Israel will throw Lebanon back 20 years.” This is how it all happened, this war completely destroyed the infrastructure of Lebanon, throwing it back 20 years. More than 160 bridges and more than 200 highways were disabled.

Conclusion

Throughout the work, we have studied the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict and its impact in the political and economic sphere in our time. Having studied and analyzed this topic, we came to the following conclusions:

The Middle East can be used as a motive and reason for the start of the World War of Civilization, the logical outcome of which could be a nuclear confrontation between the superpowers

After numerous wars between Israel and Arab countries, many humanitarian problems have emerged, the main ones being the following:

The problem of Palestinian refugees and Israeli settlers

The problem of prisoners of war and political prisoners

The problem of daily bombing of Israel and the Palestinian Authority

And also, having familiarized ourselves with the events in the Middle East, we offer our way out of the situation in Palestine: the Israeli government must renounce Zionist policies and establish equality between all segments of the population in order to solve the problem of Palestinian refugees. Israel must also return the Golan Heights of Syria, which it occupied in 1967, which belong to it under international law.

For many decades, the Arab-Israeli conflict has remained one of the most explosive among the Middle Eastern “hot spots”, the escalation of events around which could at any time lead to a new regional war, as well as significantly affect the system of international relations as a whole.

The conflict between Arabs and Jews over Palestine began even before the creation of the State of Israel. The roots of the conflict go back to the British Mandate and even earlier, when the position of Jews in the Ottoman Empire and Palestine was determined by Islamic religious law, according to which the status and rights of religious minorities were inferior to those of Muslims. Jews were then subjected to all kinds of discrimination from the local authorities, concentrated in the hands of representatives of the Arab nobility and from the local Muslim population. This situation could not but leave a mark on the relations between the two peoples.

In addition, the roots should be sought in the clash of psychologies of two peoples: the Arab population, which was committed to old religious traditions and way of life, believed in the spiritual authority of the authorities and representatives of the Zionist movement, who brought with them from Europe a completely new way of life.

Since 1917, after the proclamation of the Balfour Declaration in Palestine, relations between Jews and Arabs began to heat up and develop into a political conflict, worsening every year. The conflict was fueled by the influence of Great Britain, and later Germany and Italy, on the Arab population.

Since 1947, the war in Palestine for the creation of a Jewish national state was already in full swing. In May 1948, the State of Israel was proclaimed on the basis of UN General Assembly Resolution No. 181, adopted in November 1947. Arab countries reacted extremely negatively to what was happening by not recognizing Israel, which led to an escalation of the conflict between Israel and neighboring Arab countries. During the Arab-Israeli War (1947-49), Israel managed to defend its independence and take possession of West Jerusalem and part of the territory allocated to Palestine under a UN mandate. Iran did not participate in this war, which is due to overcoming the severe consequences of World War II.

At the time of the next Arab-Israeli clash (Six Day War, 1967), Israel advanced deep into the Sinai Peninsula, captured the Golan Heights, the West Bank of the river. Jordan, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem.

However, during the 1970s, Iran continued to cooperate with Israel in terms of trade, as well as in the areas of defense and security.

During the Yom Kippur War (1973), Iran provided small and covert support to Israel in the form of fighter jets and other military equipment. The war ended in Israel's victory, and the defeated Arab OPEC members imposed an oil embargo on countries supporting Israel and greatly inflated the price of an oil barrel, leading to a state of "oil shock" in the world.

After 1979, Iranian-Israeli relations deteriorated sharply. The key idea raised in Iran at that time was the spread and expansion of the Islamic revolution beyond the borders of the state. Israel, which has control over Jerusalem, where the al-Aqsa Mosque (Islam's third holiest site) is located, has become a stumbling block.

In 1981, Iran rejected the plan to create Palestine in the West Bank. Jordan. Iran began to declare that Palestine should be created within its previous borders and that Israel's presence there undermines the interests of the entire Islamic world. Subsequent Iranian presidents promoted a negative attitude towards Israel and built their political course in an anti-Israeli spirit. On this basis, Iran acquired allies in Lebanon, Palestine, Syria, Turkey and other Arab countries.

In September 1980, the Iran-Iraq war began over the border territory, taking over all the attention of Iran. Both warring parties received colossal financial and military assistance from outside, as well as individual structures. In 1988, the war ended in a draw.

In 1995, Iran was subject to sanctions from the United States, which were expressed by a ban on arms supplies, to which Russia joined. Only by 2001 did Russia restore supplies.

In 1997, Khatami became the President of Iran, who was later replaced by Ahmadinejad. Khatami tried to bring Iran out of isolation and establish contacts with the West. However, he had to deal with religious leaders who were shaping anti-Israeli public opinion.

Against this background, in the early 2000s, the United States willingly supported Israel and drew the attention of the IAEA to Iran's actions. Iran signed the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons back in 1968 and ratified it in 1970. Now the IAEA called on Iran to accept the Additional Protocol to the NPT, which would allow unauthorized inspections of any facilities on Iranian territory to determine their compliance with the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

In December 2003, Iran signed it in Vienna at the IAEA Headquarters. From that moment on, the world community was drawn into the discussion of the Iranian nuclear program. This document gives the IAEA the opportunity to agree to the implementation of Iran's nuclear programs. Iran has demonstrated complete openness in its actions regarding international obligations.

The Iranian parliament has not yet ratified the protocol, so Iran does not consider itself obliged to report to IAEA inspectors.

While Khatami was in power, he made possible attempts to get the IAEA to stop discriminating against Iran and recognize its right to conduct nuclear research under the NPT, while pointing out that, in accordance with this treaty, Iran has the right to carry out the full nuclear cycle, including uranium enrichment . However, over time, it became clear that the more persistently Iran proved that it was right, the more irreconcilable the position of the West became, which Israel fully shared. Therefore, starting in 2005, Iran sharply tightened its position and again attracted the attention of the world community to Israel as the owner of real nuclear weapons.

In August 2005, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad came to power in Iran. In June 2006, Ahmadinejad proposed holding a referendum not only in Iran, but also in Europe on the topic “What feelings do citizens have towards Israel?” Ahmadinejad denies that Iran has a nuclear bomb and believes that Iran has every right to develop nuclear weapons. He always focuses on the presence of nuclear weapons in other countries, especially Israel, and sees no point in worrying, because the era of nuclear weapons has passed.

Today Iran keeps the whole world in suspense. There is an open information war between Iran and Israel and the United States. New sanctions come into force, the UN receives new IAEA reports, but this only leads to increased isolation of Iran. However, Ahmadinejad is developing nuclear potential with renewed vigor. Every year the IAEA collects new evidence in favor of Iran's development of nuclear weapons. Iran continues to insist that the program is peaceful. The Iranian nuclear program is being discussed everywhere. In early 2012, Israel began discussions with the United States about invading Iran and bombing nuclear facilities. To this end, negotiations are regularly held. Israel argues its position by saying that it fears for its future fate, so it is forced to act radically.

The Arab-Israeli conflict currently involves four parallel processes: the process of restoring peace between the Arabs and Israel; the process of gradual destruction of the country of Israel; the process of intensification of the Arab-Israeli conflict; the process of global confrontation between Muslim civilization and the rest of humanity.

Iran's nuclear program haunts both Israel and the entire world community.

December 19, 2012 Israel launches an air strike on several sites in Iran believed to be part of the Iranian nuclear program infrastructure. Within 30 minutes after the Israeli attack, the Iranian air force launched a somewhat unsuccessful air raid on a number of Israeli cities - Tel Aviv, Haifa, Dimona, Beersheba. Several bombs also fall within the city limits of Jerusalem.

An armed conflict could potentially escalate into a regional or even world war, in which the United States, Arab countries, Russia, China, Great Britain and France and other countries of the world will be drawn.

If the conflict continues, colossal damage is expected due to the bombing of nuclear facilities and military operations on the territory of Iran in particular, where the civilian population will be primarily at risk. This also applies to other countries in the Middle East region, which will subsequently be involved in the conflict. It is very important now to prevent the conflict from growing to a regional scale, much less a global one.

The UN Security Council is obliged to intervene and create mechanisms to counter the deterioration of the situation in the region, as well as contribute to the speedy cessation of the armed conflict and the beginning of a peaceful settlement between the parties.

On December 19, 2012, at 6:00 am, Israel began conducting targeted strikes on some Iranian facilities, namely the Iranian nuclear facility Parchin, which is located 30 km southeast of Tehran. Parchin was not chosen as a target by chance. It was at this military base that IAEA inspectors and Israeli intelligence discovered the development of nuclear weapons. Iran began enriching uranium to 20%, which is absolutely unacceptable. This situation undermines the peaceful nature of Iran's nuclear program, because Enriched uranium within 5% is quite enough to maintain the operation of nuclear power plants.

In the spring-summer of 2012, satellite images of the Parchin military base were posted on the website of the Institute of Science and International Security (ISIS) for the attention of the world community. Iran once again did not allow IAEA inspectors to check the Parchin base. Based on this, Israel decided to launch preventive strikes on a nuclear facility. The United States, in turn, supported him.

Iran immediately reacts to Israeli actions. Within 30 minutes after the Israeli attack, the Iranian air force carried out an unsuccessful retaliatory air raid on a number of Israeli cities - Tel Aviv, Haifa, Dimona, Beer Sheva. Several bombs also fall within the city limits of Jerusalem.

The mobilization of American air and ground forces began. The United States is drawing its ground forces from Afghanistan and the Arabian Peninsula and its naval forces from the Persian Gulf to the borders of Iran. Now the world community is faced with the question: Do regional leaders decide to intervene in hostilities, or will it all end in the bombing of nuclear facilities, as was the case in Syria? and Iraq? How will the UN Security Council react?

A more dramatic situation is developing around Iran. Without the support of Arab countries, Iran will not be able to resist the United States and Israel. How the conflict will end is unknown. Iran is unlikely to want to give up its nuclear ambitions, as Iraq and Syria did.

The Arab-Israeli conflict today is one of the most pressing international problems, and the problems of migration (Muslims to Europe and Central Asians to Russia) in the modern world are also acute.

Sotskova V.P.

Literature

Rapoport M.A. Perceptions of Jewish immigration to Palestine by the Arab public, 1882-1948. - St. Petersburg, 2013. - 71 p.
Mesamed V. Israel - Iran - from friendship to enmity. URL: http://www.centrasia.ru/newsA.php?st=1266528060.
Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. URL: http://www.un.org/ru/documents/decl_conv/conventions/npt.shtml.

Druzhilovsky S.B. Iran-Israeli relations in the light of the development of the Iranian nuclear program. URL: http://www.iimes.ru/rus/stat/2006/04-05-06a.htm.