Palestinian-Israeli Border Conflict

Introduction

The rise to power of Hamas is only the latest episode in a conflict that has continued for more than a century. The Israeli-Palestinian problem has its origins in the late nineteenth century with the birth of the modern concept of Zionism within the programmatic writings of Moses Hess, Judah Alkalai, Hirsch Kalischer and Theodore Herzl. The wave of pogroms in Tsarist Russia of Alexander II (1881) and the growing anti-Semitism that was spreading in Europe, whose emblems were the "Dreyfus Affair" (1896) and the publication of the fake "Protocols of the Elders of Zion "had pushed these intellectuals to formulate the above concept (Catignani, pp. 560). Zionism proclaimed the need to establish a completely Jewish and claimed its "historic rights" and exclusive of the Palestinian territory, inhabited by people at the time Muslim, Christian and Druze. Herzl was the Hungarian journalist who founded the Zionist movement and to hold the first World Congress in 1897, while in the meantime, Jewish immigration began in the Palestinian territory, causing misunderstandings with the local population.

Balfour Declaration

The First World War completely changed the geopolitical landscape of the Middle East, with the fall of the age-old Ottoman Empire and the creation of French and British mandates in the area. The first real success of the Zionist movement was achieved thanks to the famous "Balfour Declaration", in which the British representative in Palestine, is engaged in "construction of a Jewish homeland" in the area and at the same time safeguarding the rights of the Arab population (Cejka, pp. 41). The contradiction inherent in the dual commitment was evident in Britain and clashed with the desire for national self-determination (just inspired by the Allies during the war with the "14 points" of U.S. President Wilson) of both populations. The influx of Jewish immigrants and the reality of an imperialist foreign government provoked a revival of nationalist Palestinian Arabs, whose society is polarized in those years. On the one hand there was the faction led by Husseini clan that required the end of the British mandate, the establishment of an Arab state and the cessation of Jewish immigration. On the other hand there was the so-called "Opposition" dominated by an aristocratic clan of Jerusalem, the Nashashibi, who took a softer line against much of the Yishuv (Dowty, pp. 491). The culmination of this socio-political rift was touched in the years 1936-39, with a series of riots and terrorist acts were closed with a substantial disappearance of opposition forces, even if, in fact, to be truly defeat was all the Palestinian society because this deep rift opened the way for the defeat of 1948.

While the British sought to quell the revolt (they wanted a peaceful Middle East, having regard to the Nazi threat in Europe), came on the first proposal for partition of Palestine, sponsored by Lord Peel, but immediately rejected dall AHC (Arab Higher Committee) (Friedman, pp. 239). This proposal failed, to win over Whitehall throughout the Arab world on the eve of World War II, ...