Since the declaration of Israel's establishment in 1948, conflict has existed between Israel and the surrounding Arab countries, rooted in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Zionists viewed the region of Palestine as the Jewish ancestral homeland and sought to establish a Jewish state or homeland there through colonization, while Arabs generally opposed Zionism, envisioning Palestine as Arab Palestinian land and an essential part of the Arab world.
By 1920, sectarian conflict had begun following the first, second, and third waves of Zionist migration to Palestine and the Franco-British occupation and administration (1918–1920) of the former territories of Ottoman Syria (1516–1918) and the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire after World War I. In 1920, following agreements including the 1916 Sykes–Picot treaty between Britain and France, the McMahon–Hussein correspondence, and the Balfour Declaration, which expressed British support for "the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people", the League of Nations accorded the Mandate for Palestine to the British, establishing British rule in Mandatory Palestine (1920–1948).
The intercommunal violence escalated into civil war in 1947 after the United Nations' adoption of the Partition Plan for Palestine, and then into an international war in 1948 with the May 14 declaration of the establishment of Israel, the expiration of British Mandate at midnight, and the entry of Arab regular armies the following morning. The 1948 Palestine war ended with the 1949 Armistice Agreements, which established the Green Line. More wars followed in 1956, 1967, 1973, and 1982.
Several peace treaties and other diplomatic and economic accords were signed over the subsequent half-century. In 2002, the Arab League proposed the Arab Peace Initiative, although diplomatic activity between Israel and individual Arab countries involved ceasefires and later formal relations with some. By 2020, the Abraham Accords further calmed relations. Conflicts between Israel and various Palestinian factions ebbed and flowed, including the 1987–1993 First Intifada, Israel's intervention in the 1975–1990 Lebanese Civil War to oust the Palestine Liberation Organization from Lebanon, the 2000–2005 Second Intifada, the 2011–2024 Syrian civil war, and most recently the October 7 attacks in 2023 and ensuing Gaza war.
Background
National movements
Medieval antisemitism in Arabic-speaking lands was rarer than in Europe, but Jews remained subject to persecution. The rise of Zionism and Arab nationalism in the late 19th century is believed by some scholars to have caused a rise in Arab antisemitism. The roots of the Arab–Israeli conflict lie in the tensions between Zionism and Palestinian nationalism. Territory regarded by the Jewish people as their historical homeland is considered by many Arabs as belonging to Palestinians. The area was under the control of the Ottoman Empire for nearly 400 years until its partitioning in the aftermath of the Great Arab Revolt during World War I. Approaching the end of their empire, the Ottomans began to assert the primacy of Turks within the empire, while discriminating against Arabs. The promise of liberation led many Jews and Arabs to support the allied powers during World War I, forging widespread Arab nationalism. Arab nationalism and Zionism began in Europe. The Zionist Congress started in Basel in 1897, while the Arab Club emerged in Paris in 1906.
In the late 19th century Jewish communities began to migrate to Palestine, purchasing land from Ottoman landlords. The late 19th century population in Palestine reached 600,000 – mostly Muslim Arabs, with significant minorities of Jews, Christians, Druze and some Samaritan and Baháʼí. At that time, Jerusalem did not extend beyond the walled area and had a population of a few tens of thousands. Collective farms, known as kibbutzim, were established, as was the first entirely Jewish city in modern times, Tel Aviv.
During 1915–1916, as World War I was underway, the British High Commissioner in Egypt, Sir Henry McMahon, secretly corresponded with Husayn ibn 'Ali, the patriarch of the Hashemite family and Ottoman governor of Mecca and Medina. McMahon convinced Husayn to lead an Arab revolt against the Ottomans, which had aligned with Germany against Britain and France. McMahon promised that if the Arabs supported Britain in the war, the British government would support an independent Arab state under Hashemite rule in the Arab provinces of the Ottoman Empire, including Palestine. The Arab revolt, led by T. E. Lawrence ("Lawrence of Arabia") and Husayn's son Faysal, was successful in defeating the Ottomans, and Britain took control over much of this area.
Sectarian conflict
First mandate years and the Franco-Syrian war
In 1917, British‑led troops (including the Jewish Legion) captured Palestine from the Ottoman Empire; the British government issued the Balfour Declaration, which stated that the government viewed favorably "the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people" but "that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine". The Declaration was a result of the belief of key members of the government, including Prime Minister David Lloyd George, that Jewish support was essential to winning the war; however, the declaration upset the Arab world. After the war, the area came under British rule as the British Mandate of Palestine. The area mandated to the British in 1923 included what modern Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza Strip. Transjordan eventually was carved into a separate British protectorate – the Emirate of Transjordan, which gained autonomous status in 1928 and achieved independence in 1946 with United Nations approved end of the British Mandate.
A major crisis among Arab nationalists took place with the failed establishment of the Arab Kingdom of Syria in 1920. With the disastrous outcome of the Franco-Syrian War, the self-proclaimed Hashemite kingdom with its capital in Damascus was defeated and the Hashemite ruler took refuge in Mandatory Iraq. The crisis saw the first confrontation Arab and Jewish forces in the Battle of Tel Hai in March 1920. More importantly the collapse of the pan-Arabist kingdom led to the establishment of the Palestinian flavor of Arab nationalism, with the return of Amin al-Husseini from Damascus to Jerusalem in late 1920.
Jewish immigration to Mandatory Palestine continued, accompanied by a similar, but less documented, migration in the Arab sector, returning workers from Syria and other areas. Palestinians considered this rapid influx of Jewish immigrants to threaten their homeland and their identity. Jewish policies of purchasing land and prohibiting the Arab employment in Jewish-owned industries and farms enraged Palestinian communities. Demonstrations were held as early as 1920, protesting what the Arabs felt were unfair preferences for Jewish immigrants in the British mandate. Violence broke out later that year in Jerusalem. Winston Churchill's 1922 White Paper tried to reassure the Arab population, denying that the creation of a Jewish state was the implication of the Balfour Declaration.
1929
In 1929, after a demonstration by Vladimir Jabotinsky's political group Betar at the Western Wall, riots started in Jerusalem and expanded throughout Mandatory Palestine; Arabs murdered 67 Jews in Hebron, in what became known as the Hebron massacre. During the week of the 1929 riots, at least 116 Arabs and 133 Jews were killed and 339 were wounded.
1930s and 1940s
By 1931, 17 percent of the population of Mandatory Palestine were Jewish, an increase of six percent since 1922. Jewish immigration peaked soon after the Nazis came to power in Germany, doubling the Jewish population in Palestine.
In the mid-1930s Izz ad-Din al-Qassam arrived from Syria and established the Black Hand, an anti-Zionist and anti-British militant organization. He recruited and arranged military training for peasants, and by 1935 he had enlisted between 200 and 800 men. The cells were equipped with bombs and firearms, which they used to kill Jewish settlers in the area, as well as engaging in a campaign of vandalism of Jewish settler plantations. By 1936, escalating tensions led to the 1936–1939 Arab revolt in Palestine.
In response to Arab pressure, the British Mandate authorities greatly reduced the number of Jewish immigrants to Palestine (see White Paper of 1939 and the SS Exodus). These restrictions remained in place until the end of the mandate, which coincided with the Nazi Holocaust and the flight of Jewish refugees from Europe. As a consequence, most Jewish entrants to Mandatory Palestine were considered illegal (see Aliyah Bet), intensifying tensions. Following several failed diplomatic attempts to solve the problem, the British asked the United Nations for help. On 15 May 1947, the General Assembly appointed a committee, the UNSCOP, composed of representatives from eleven states. The US, the USSR and other major powers were not represented. After five weeks of in-country study, the Committee offered a majority and a minority plan. The majority proposed a Plan of Partition with Economic Union. The minority proposed The Independent State of Palestine. With only slight modifications, the former was adopted in resolution 181(II) of 29 November 1947. The Resolution was adopted by 33 votes to 13 with 10 abstentions. All six UN-member Arab states voted no. On the ground, Arab and Jewish Palestinians fought to control strategic positions in the region. Major atrocities were committed by both sides.
Civil war
Just before the end of the mandate, the Haganah launched offensives in which they gained control over all the territory allocated by the UN to the Jewish State, creating a flood of refugees and capturing the towns of Tiberias, Haifa, Safad, Beisan and, in effect, Jaffa.
Early in 1948 the United Kingdom announced its firm intention to terminate its mandate in Palestine on 14 May. In response, US president Truman made a statement on 25 March proposing UN trusteeship rather than partition, stating that:
unfortunately, it has become clear that the partition plan cannot be carried out at this time by peaceful means. [...] unless emergency action is taken, there will be no public authority in Palestine on that date capable of preserving law and order. Violence and bloodshed will descend upon the Holy Land. Large-scale fighting among the people of that country will be the inevitable result.
History
1948 Arab–Israeli War
On 14 May 1948, the day on which the British Mandate expired, the Jewish People's Council gathered at the Tel Aviv Museum and approved a proclamation that declared the establishment of a Jewish state in Eretz Israel, to be known as the State of Israel.
The borders of the new state were not delineated. An official cablegram from the Secretary-General of the League of Arab States to the UN Secretary-General on 15 May 1948 stated publicly that Arab Governments found "themselves compelled to intervene for the sole purpose of restoring peace and security and establishing law and order in Palestine" in Clause 10(e). Further in Clause 10(e):
The Governments of the Arab States hereby confirm at this stage the view that had been repeatedly declared by them on previous occasions, such as the London Conference and before the United Nations mainly, the only fair and just solution to the problem of Palestine is the creation of United State of Palestine based upon the democratic principles ...
That day, the armies of Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Iraq invaded, launching the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. The nascent Israeli Defense Force repulsed the Arab forces, extending the nascent state's borders beyond the original UNSCOP partition. By December 1948, Israel controlled most of Mandate Palestine west of the Jordan River. The remainder of the Mandate consisted of what became the nation of Jordan, the area that came to be called the West Bank (controlled by Jordan), and the Gaza Strip (controlled by Egypt). Before and during this conflict, 713,000 Palestinian Arabs were expelled or fled, becoming Palestinian refugees.
During the war, Israel conducted a biological warfare campaign codenamed Cast Thy Bread to covertly poison Palestinian wells to prevent villagers from returning. Many Palestinians fled from the areas taken by Israel as a response to massacres of Arab towns by militant Jewish organizations like the Irgun and the Lehi (See Deir Yassin massacre). The war came to an end with the signing of the 1949 Armistice Agreements between Israel and each of its Arab neighbors.
The status of Jewish citizens in Arab states worsened during the war. Anti-Jewish riots erupted throughout the Arab World in December 1947. Jewish communities were hit particularly hard in Aleppo, Syria and British-controlled Aden, with hundreds of dead and injured. In Libya, Jews were deprived of citizenship, and in Iraq, their property was seized. Egypt expelled most of its foreign community, including Jews, after the Suez crisis in 1956, while Algeria deprived its French citizens, including Jews, of citizenship upon its independence in 1962. Over the course of twenty years, some 850,000 Jews from Arab countries emigrated.
1949–1967
Following Israel's victory in the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, Jews living in the West Bank or Gaza were expelled to Israel. Arabs caught on the Palestinian side of the ceasefire line could not return to their homes in Israel. Those on the Israeli side were not formally expelled, although many fled. Responsibility for the exodus remains disputed. Historian Benny Morris claimed that the "decisive cause" of Palestinian departure was predominantly Jewish forces' actions (physical expulsions, military assaults on residential areas, fear of fighting, abandonment of nearby villages, incitement propaganda), while Arab leadership orders were decisive in only 6 of 392 villages. Over 700,000 Jews emigrated to Israel from 1948 to 1952, including ~285,000 from Arab countries.