Most would think that the geography region of a place would be the easiest to describe, but after all the conflict this region has gone through, it’s been torn up and put back together many of times in this Middle Eastern area. Present day the state of Palestine is located east of the Mediterranean Sea and the banks of the river Jordan plus some of the regions surrounding south and east of that (Wikipedia, 2.3-Geography). This might have started out being the region, but then again, where would we put Israel. After the many conflicts we will discover through out the paper we come to find how Israel eventually got it’s place in the Palestinian area and is now to this day a region at the eastern end of the Mediterranean Sea, and boardered by the countries Lebanon by the North, Syria by the northeast, Jordan by the east (which durring the conflict of Palestine and Israel, Jordan is actully Arab-Palastine), and finally holding it together by Egypt south of Israel (Wikipedia, 2.3-Geography). Two more areas we sould identify that are important to were much of the conflict actuly happened, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. The West Bank is a land locked territory between Israel and Jordan and west of the River Jordan. Durring the conflict West Bank started under Palastinian athority, but through out the wars and continued conflict the West Bank became under Israel comand to this day. This land mass has been a disputed region by both contries for power and controlover it. The other region, the Gaza, has a bit different history. This narrow coastal strip northwest of Israel along the meditreanean waters is a soverin country. Even though it hold one of the most heavily dence cities on Earth, it is only under Palastinian jurastiction. Although the palastians only hold a military occupation, Israel hold the occupying power (Wikipedia, 2.3 Geography). We covered the two main loactions, Palastine and Israel, geographically for you to better understand were this conflict is happing in the world and the areas that affect including the neighboring countries and also, the two regions that arose conflict, the West bank and the Gaza. Edgar Morin in his paper Israel/Palastine: The Cancer, discribes his thoughts on how the geographical location affects the conflict. “The Middle East is the Seismic Area of the Planet where East and West, North and South, Rich and Poor, Secular and Religious Collide. The Arab-Israeli cancer is based on a territorial pathology: the foundation of two nations in a single land…”(Morin). From Israel trying to for a country in a region already in dominance is where much of the conflict arises, making the geography at this point a very important factor is this conflict, conflict started by to different culture groups which is what will consider now.
By having two different regions in a quarrel, it can be the cause lead by two very different culture groups, the Israelis and the Palestinian-Arabs. There are many culture groups the have been made and affect over the course in time be the fall out of the crisis, but these two main groups is what will focus in on. Over many years culture has been one of the most powerful factors contributing to conflict. In the Israel Palestine conflict two dominate culture groups went head to head on their religion ethnicity. Israel was predominantly Orthodox Jews. Were as the Palestinian were mostly practicing Zionists. Both are forms of different ethnicity, which makes it very hard to understand the reasons for practicing something that is so different from you own, ethnocentric feelings toward your practice is easy because people fear culture that the differences are so far dissimilar from your own. An article from the Israeli-Palestinian ProCon.org site states a clear description of how the relationship between the Orthodox Jews and the Zionists collide.
"In the nineteenth century, Zionism often competed with Orthodox Judaism for the hearts and minds of young Jews, and enmity existed between Orthodox Jews of Eastern Europe and the Zionists (and those residing in Palestine in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries). Orthodox Jews resented the dominantly secular nature of Jewish nationalism (for example, the desire to turn the holy tongue of Hebrew into an instrument of everyday discourse), whereas the Zionists derogated the other-worldly passivity of Orthodox Jews.
-Country Studies
This creates a problem for the two disparity groups that coexist virtually in the same region. The two clashing cultures result in conflict and hostility treating their culture identity on both sides. Some of the reasons for the conflict are simply that some have the opinion that “it is the Jews land,” because of historical religious belief, one of these opinions states, “Unlike the Jews, those Arabs who immigrated there had no ancient attachments to or historical memories of this homeland ... this ancient Land of the Jews!” (Masada2000.org). Which can make theses two culture disputing over land even more then just land, but religious holy ground. These disputes have been going on for long periods of time that it’s easy to use a time line to see how conflict has evolved between the two culture groups.
A time-line is a great way to see how conflict and issues develop and have an impact as time goes on. Israel and Palestine history has developed quite profusely of the last century or so. There have been many incidents that have transacted through out the history of Israel and Palestine, so many that it would be hard to describe all important events in just one paragraph. Ranging from control of Palestine area, the many wars and violence that has happened to set boundaries or take control over land to now the peace treaties that have been in resent years in order to help bring a reach of harmony to both countries. In the 19th century many of these events have taken place, starting with the 1922 British mandate of the Palestine region after WWI, the U.N. had given mandate to British authority, Turkey had previously owned the territory before that. Arabs and Jews had many problems with conflict in this area living together, so in 1947 the U.N issued a “United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine or United Nations General Assembly Resolution 181,” which divided the region into 2 seprate areas (Wikipedia, 2.4-History). In creation of Israel to the west of River Jordan, and Palestine to the east, so that isrelite jews and arab palestines could live segretly. Although this plan failed and in 1948 the Arab-israeli War took place. “After the United Nations partitioned the territory of the British Mandate of Palestine two states, Jewish and Arab, the Arabs refused to accept it and the armies of Egypt, Transjordan and Iraq, supported by others, attacked the newly established State of Israel. It was the first in a series of open wars in the Aran-Israeli conflict” (Wikipedia, 2.4-History). As a result of this 13 month war Israeli fought off the preditor neighboring countries and won. The 1949 Armistice Agreement was issued as a set of a agreements that was between Israel and the countries involved in the war. It is a set of agreements that ended the 1948 Arab-Israeli War and established the armistice lines between Israel and the West Bank, also known as the Green Line, until the 1967Six Day War (Wikipedia, 2.4-History). From 1967-1993 many wars broke out in the Middle East all which affected Isreal and Palestine. Some of these wars followed in reprimand to these victories they israelis had over Israel, Palastine and other counties took it upon themselves to not let the israelis have victory. In the 1990’s after the wars ended peace was starting to take stride once again, by nations trying to help settle the conflict. Although peace was in motion it didn’t stop the violence that was happing. The most recent breakout were The First and then The Second Intifada. “The First Intifada refers to a series of violent incidents between Palestinians and Israelis between 1987 and approximately 1993, when the Oslo accords were signed and the Palestinian National Authority was established. It is also referred to as the "war of the stones." The Second Intifada, also known as the al-Aqsa-Intifada, is considered to have been between 2000 and early 2005” (Wikipedia, 2.4-History). As I said before many events have taking place that take many years to either grow or disolve. Many of these event have lead to the actual issues that are involved in this conflict between the two regions, which is a powerful point to understand the actual conflict itself.
The actual issues of any conflict are never point blank easy to identify, many of the more difficult conflicts we study have many underlying points that become passed over. Some of the main issues that make up this conflict would be the ethnicty and land disputes. Many of the issues I have stated before in the previous paragraphs, but to go more indepth about each of these main issues is what it’s all about. Ethnicity or nationalism is something that many contries have prejudice crisises with. That fact being that people fear those unlike themselves and fear can create hostility and create a degree of unfamiliarity, a form of racism. So when you have two different culturly groups with strong culture identities, like the Orthodox Jews and the Zionists-Arabs, resideding in one place the tension can and occur including active violence. The other main reason that conflict arose was because of land mass. After the seperation of Palastine in creating Israel, the palestinians were out raged that there conties was broken up and part of it was taken away from them. Where as the israels beleve this was the Holy Land to begin with and since the Brithish mandate said this can be your land they wan to hold on to it. Power stugle over the Israeli is also a main issue for conflict to happen between countries, when the palastinians push the israels push back and the cycle goes back and forth because of fueding issues. These are the issues simplified in my terms because otherwise there are so many issues that create conflict it would be to hard to discribe them all. Plus many of the issues can be found and are laid out through the entire paper because the issues are the keynotes to the conflict itself. Another way to look at the issues of the conflict is to see whats creating them and that would be the factors contributing to the perpetuation of the crisis.
When you think of conflict you think of issues, and mostly you think of the factors explaining why there are these issues. The Israeli and Palastine conflict has many factors that contribute to there ongoing crisis. Isreal-Palestine ProCon Organization thinks that many of the factors that contribute to the two regions contant conflict is because of govermantal differences and ethnicty disimularties. Some of the factors they listed were; Israeli Statehood, Palestinian Statehood, Palestinian Leaders & Organizations, Israeli Leaders & Governments, Wars & Conflicts, Historic Resolutions & Negotiations, Ethnicity & Religion and Land Disputes. All of these items can lead to augmentative disputes between countries, some of the factors we have explained in other paragraphs about the issues they raise and reasons for hostility, something we haven’t touched on is the governmental allocations for each of the regions. Both have very different and complicated governmental systems and this can be a huge factor in creating conflict when you don’t have a very stable administration to govern. Although many factors have been listed that contribute to the conflict, other factors are also creating ways to help with potential to mitigate or end conflict. These can be ways of communication strategies to help bring peace.
In just the last decade or so many efforts have been administrated to help bring an end to the conflict in Israel and Palestine. One of the big moves that happened is the “Road Map for Peace,” which is a plan to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by international entities: the United States, the European Union, Russia, and the United Nations (Wikipedia, 2.4-History). The concept of this plan is “In exchange for statehood, the road map requires the Palestinian Authority to make democratic reforms and abandon the use of terrorism. Israel, for its part, must support and accept the emergence of a reformed Palestinian government and end settlement activity of the Gaza Strip and West Bank as the Palestinian terrorist threat is removed” (Wikipedia, 2.4-History). Wakipedia state that “On both sides, there have at various times been parties who differ in the degree to which they advocate or use the violent tactics, active non-violence, etc. There are people who sympathize with the goals of one or the other side, without necessarily embracing the tactics that have been used on behalf of those goals; further, there are those who embrace at least some of the goals of both sides.” This is an effort to use intercultural commincation, by embracing the ideas important to other culture you can achive mutual respect and other forms of the BASIC dementions for intercultual competence.
When I first started this paper I din’t know much about the conflict going on in Israel and Palestine. Although I didn’t know much when I started I have come to understand a lot more after doing this research paper and finding out the topics breifed in the introduction. The geographic location of crisis starts, how land disputes over in the Middle East caused tension between both counties over fought over land. The cultural groups involved in the crisis, different ethnicities and religions of the Orthodox Jews and Zionists clash together because of ethnocentrism. The timeline of pre-crisis and crisis to show you how this conflict has evolved over the many years, many of the events I listed have been very important to the progress of the conflict and development of the region. The issues of crisis and how the contribute to the constant conflict, big issues like land conflicts and discrimination to culture groups unlike your own are breeding grounds for continued conflict. The factors that contribute to the perpetuation of the crisis, including ethnicity, land, and government and power that stir issues and keep negative ones in motion. Finally the communication strategies that have provided potential to ease to a possible end, ideas about intercultural competence and peaceful agreements can end conflict if both parties are willing to strive for peace. Although there doesn’t seem to be steady peace in the present time, times are constantly changing in our world and serenity is reachable anywhere though intercultural communication between feuding states.
