Israel-Palestine Conflict: The way forward

Israel is the world’s only Jewish state located just east of the Mediterranean Sea with an area of about 22000 km and about 8 million population and is present in the centre of Islamic countries like Egypt, Iraq, Libya, and Turkey. On the other hand, Palestine is an Arab population.

Though both Jews and Arab Muslims date their claims to the land back a couple thousand years, the current political conflict began in the early 20th century. World war two is particularly important for today’s conflict, as it led to the creation of the state of Israel and put the newly established Jewish state in control of the Palestinian lands such as Gaza, West Bank and Jerusalem.

Today, the Gaza strip and West Bank are nominally controlled by the Palestinianians and are under Israeli occupation. In August 2014, the conflict escalated and resulted in Israel’s full-fledged assault on the Gaza strip.

Jerusalem is also an issue between Palestine and Israel. Both countries lay their claim on this city. In the 1967 Six-Day War, Israel had occupied the East Jerusalem and is occupying it ever since.

The three dominant religions of the world, Christianity, Islam, and Judaism all have religious sentiments attached to this holy city Jerusalem. Christians say that the station of Holy Christ is in Jerusalem. For Muslims, the Dome of Rock and Al-Aqsa Mosque are in Jerusalem from where Prophet Muhammad was taken to Mairaj. Jews cry and make their wishes at Dewar-e-Girya, a worship wall of Prophet Suleman.

Zionism is Israel’s national ideology. Zionists believe that Judaism is a nationality as well as a religion, and that Jews deserve their own state in their ancestral homeland, Israel, in the same way the French people deserve France or the Chinese people have China. It’s what brought Jews back to Israel in the first place.

The question is, how come Jews have become the occupying people of this area? To answer this, we will have to know their history.

After 70 years of Christ, Rumi defeated Jews in a war, and as a result, the Jews left Israel. They were having no place to live for almost 100 years. But by the end of 19^th century, Jews came back to Palestine and captured Israel again.

The zionist ideology believes in restoring and building a state as it was in Prophet Suleman’s time, which was in all Muslim countries. They have a belief that they have to build Prophet Suleman’s temple again. They want to break Mosque of Aqsa and build the temple there. They say that Haikal-e-Sulemani was on the place where today Dome of Rock and Mosque of Aqsa are present.

However, not all Jews believe in this theory.

The primary approach to solving the conflict today is a so-called “two-state solution” that would establish Palestine as an independent state in Gaza and the West Bank, and atleast the East Jerusalem which was occupied by Israel in the 1967’s Six Day War and  leaving the rest of the land to Israel. Though the two-state plan is

This is the only way forward and a practical one too. But then again, though the two-state plan is clear in theory, but the two sides are still deeply divided over how to make it work in practice.

The alternative to a two-state solution is a “one-state solution,” wherein all of the land becomes either one big Israel or one big Palestine. Most observers think this would cause more problems than it would solve, but this outcome is becoming more likely over time for political and demographic reasons.

One serious threat to the proposal of a two-state solution is Israel’s continued to put Jewish settlers in the remaining tiny areas under Palestinians’ control. This is making the idea more difficult to implement and it is feared that by doing so there won’t be any land left where the an independent state of Palestine could be carved out.