A History Of The Arab-Israeli Conflict

10 Pages 2437 Words

In the fifty- three years following the establishment of an Israeli homeland on May 14, 1948 in Palestine, two words can be used to best summarize the region: volatile and unstable. The distrust and genuine hatred between the Israelis and the Palestinians and Arab community has created a recent history marked with thousands of skirmishes, hundreds of minor conflicts, countless terrorist actions, and four major wars.
The 1990's offered a ray of hope in Palestinian/Israeli relations. Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) leader, Yasser Arafat, began to publicly assume a less radical stance than was the previous norm. Arafat and the PLO denounced terrorist acts around the world and under the influence of the Clinton administration entered into a less hostile stance towards Israel. Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Ministers Yitzhak Rabin and Ahud Barak, both from Israel's more liberal parties, agreed to open negotiations with the PLO. These striking moves and new actions toward peace were a first in the history of the State of Israel.
With the combination of both sides being willing to make previously unheard of concessions along with a Clinton Administration that was actively focusing on a Middle East Peace Agreement, a stage was being set the stage for a monumental peace accord. Greatly helping the situation was the fact that the mid to late 1990's marked an era of relative peace and stability throughout the entire Middle East region. In the years following the 1991 Gulf War the major radical figure of the region, Saddam Hussein, was greatly weakened and therefore his influence on the region was reduced.

The public began to see the face of a new, more peaceful, less radical Middle East. Hussein's Jordan and Israel signed a historic peace accord between the two countries in 1995. It was during this era, that a feasible possibility of peace between Israel and the Palestinians could be wrought. Despite the great hope for p...