Roots of the Arab-Israeli Conflict

The very roots of the Arab-Israeli conflicts are religious differences and territorial disputes. Through the 1900s other countries intervened with the original issues which often did not help the situation.  During the First World War both Great Britain and France affected the Middle East.  Basically the Ottoman Empire was divided between these two countries. France had the areas of Lebanon and Syria while Great Britain had the areas of Iraq, Trans-Jordan, and Palestine. There were, however, Arab governments set up in these mandates except for in Palestine.  In 1917 the Balfour Declaration was Britain’s agreement to give the Jewish people a homeland in Palestine if they were to help them defeat the Germans.  The British also promised the Arabs independence in Palestine if they helped defeat the Ottoman Empire.  This obviously would cause tension as Britain could obviously not fulfill both these promises.  So for a time neither the Arabs not the Jewish got what was promised until the UN’s partition in 1947.  The Jewish were happy with the partition but the Arabs were not.  Britain and France would both end up leaving this area in the 1940s.  France gave Syria and Lebanon independence in 1946 and Britain handed over the issues in Palestine to the UN in 1947.  Although both countries left the area around the same time the overall impact that Britain had on the area was much greater than the overall impact that France had on the area.  Until this day the UN has not been able to make peace in this area and it
is quite unlikely that peace will be reached for quite some time.

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