Why can't Israelis and Palestinians live together?

Answer 1

Answer 1

The problems between Israelis and Palestinians are based on territorial claims. When the United Nations passed the resolution granting the creation of sovereign Israeli State, problems began. The people called Palestinians, most of which were Muslims, believed that the territory belonged to them. With the aid of other Islamic States in the Middle East, there were decades of violence and wars. These acts of violence only made the situation worse. There are now negotiations between Israel and the people representing the Palestinians. There is a distinct belief that the violence will be ended and that peace will come to that region.

Answer 2

The problem actually started prior to the Israeli State's creation and independence. There had been constant repression of the indigenous Jews in Ottoman Palestine (1800s), including some small pogroms. However, a proper conflict did not emerge until the 1920s and 1930s with the confrontations between immigrant Zionist Jews and the indigenous Arabs. Before that point, the Immigration into the land had been a small trickle and Arabs were not terribly concerned. However, the Jewish immigration in the 1920s was quite large and disruptive. By the mid 1930s, both sides had developed militias which they used both to attack British colonial institutions and each other. Jews also flooded back to the Holy Land following World War II, since they felt that they would always be persecuted in countries where they were the minority. In 1947, as UN Resolution 181 was being debated, a full-scale war erupted between the Jewish militias and the Arab militias. When Israel declared its independence in 1948, the Arab States joined in the War which caused it to be internationally recognized and called the Arab-Israeli War of 1948-9. The on and off conflict that has remained unresolved for over half a century now.

Today, the primary issue is that both the Jews and the Palestinians say that they are willing to tolerate the presence of the other, but only if they are in control. Neither side really wants to take the needs, desires, and fears of the other group into consideration. Jews often pretend that the atrocities that took place during the Nakba did not happen, that Palestinians do not have a unique ethnic identiy, and that Palestinians suffer under the Occupation of the West Bank and the blockade around Gaza. Palestinians often do not to understand the prevalence of Anti-Semitism worldwide and the fear culture it creates, how Jews see their history in the Islamic countries, and why Jews are bothered by the idea of complete Palestinian Right of Return.

To read more about the causes of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, please see the Related Questions below.