Palestine Conflict

To first understand the conflict between the Jews and the Palestinians in Israel, it’s important to look back on the history to which caused the conflict in the first place. Judea, which was once home to the Jews in ancient times, was conquered by the Romans and renamed Palestine. Palestine was later conquered and inhabited by Arabs for over a thousand years. The Zionist movement arose to restore the Jews to Israel, ignoring the existing Arab population. Following the Balfour Declaration in 1917, Palestine was granted to the British as a League of Nations mandate to build a national home for the Jewish people. The Arabs resented the Jews coming in to take their land. They repeatedly rioted creating a history of hostility between the Jews and Arabs in Palestine. Britain then stopped Jewish immigration to Palestine. After the Holocaust, pressure on Britain increased to allow Jewish immigration to Palestine. In 1947, the UN partitioned the land into Arab and Jewish states. The Arabs did not accept the partition and war broke out. The Jews won a decisive victory, expanded their state, and created several hundred thousand Palestinian refugees. The Arab states refused to recognize Israel or make peace with it. Wars broke out and there were many terror raids. Each side believes different versions of the same history and each side views the conflict as wholly the fault of the other and expects an apology.

The Bush Administration is concerned with making peace in the Middle East because 40 percent of the world’s oil comes from the Arabs. If there is war going on there, the country in unstable and it effects the oil prices in the United States. The problems in the middle east primarily effect the United States because if there are terrorists controlling the oil of the world, we as Americans end up paying more for gas for our cars and a lot of our country depends on oil for a lot of different things.

Another reason the United States