PreviousNext

Background
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict dates back to the end of the nineteenth century. In
1947, the United Nations adopted Resolution 181, known as the Partition Plan, which
sought to divide the British Mandate of Palestine into Arab and Jewish states. On
May 14, 1948, the State of Israel was created, sparking the first Arab-Israeli War.
The war ended in 1949 with Israel’s victory, but 750,000 Palestinians were
displaced, and the territory was divided into 3 parts: the State of Israel, the
West Bank (of the Jordan River), and the Gaza Strip.

Over the following years, tensions rose in the region, particularly between Israel
and Egypt, Jordan, and Syria. Following the 1956 Suez Crisis and Israel’s invasion
of the Sinai Peninsula, Egypt, Jordan, and Syria signed mutual defense pacts in
anticipation of a possible mobilization of Israeli troops. In June 1967,
following a series of maneuvers by Egyptian President Abdel Gamal Nasser, Israel
preemptively attacked Egyptian and Syrian air forces, starting the Six-Day War.
After the war, Israel gained territorial control over the Sinai Peninsula and Gaza
Strip from Egypt; the West Bank and East Jerusalem from Jordan; and the Golan
Heights from Syria. Six years later, in what is referred to as the Yom Kippur War
or the October War, Egypt and Syria launched a surprise two-front attack on Israel
to regain their lost territory; the conflict did not result in significant gains
for Egypt, Israel, or Syria, but Egyptian President Anwar al-Sadat declared the war
a victory for Egypt as it allowed Egypt and Syria to negotiate over previously
ceded territory. Finally, in 1979, following a series of cease-fires and peace
negotiations, representatives from Egypt and Israel signed the Camp David Accords, a
peace treaty that ended the thirty-year conflict between Egypt and Israel.

Even though the Camp David Accords improved relations between Israel and its
neighbors, the question of Palestinian self-determination and self-governance
remained unresolved. In 1987, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians living in the
West Bank and Gaza Strip rose up against the Israeli government in what is known as
the first intifada. The 1993 Oslo I Accords mediated the conflict, setting up a
framework for the Palestinians to govern themselves in the West Bank and Gaza, and
enabled mutual recognition between the newly established Palestinian Authority and
Israel’s government. In 1995, the Oslo II Accords expanded on the first agreement,
adding provisions that mandated the complete withdrawal of Israel from 6 cities and
450 towns in the West Bank.

In 2000, sparked in part by Palestinian grievances over Israel’s control over the
West Bank, a stagnating peace process, and former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel
Sharon’s visit to the al-Aqsa mosque—the third holiest site in Islam—in September
2000, Palestinians launched the second intifada, which would last until 2005. In
response, the Israeli government approved the construction of a barrier wall around
the West Bank in 2002, despite opposition from the International Court of Justice
and the International Criminal Court.

In 2013, the United States attempted to revive the peace process between the Israeli
government and the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank. However, peace talks
were disrupted when Fatah—the Palestinian Authority’s ruling party—formed a unity
government with its rival faction Hamas in 2014. Hamas, a spin-off of Egypt’s
Muslim Brotherhood founded in 1987 following the first intifada, is one of two
major Palestinian political parties and was designated a foreign terrorist
organization by the United States in 1997.

In the summer of 2014, clashes in the Palestinian territories precipitated

a military confrontation between the Israeli military and Hamas in which Hamas fired
nearly three thousand rockets at Israel, and Israel retaliated with a major
offensive in Gaza. The skirmish ended in late August 2014 with a cease-fire deal
brokered by Egypt, but only after 73 Israelis and 2,251 Palestinians were killed.
After a wave of violence between Israelis and Palestinians in 2015, Palestinian
President Mahmoud Abbas announced that Palestinians would no longer be bound by the
territorial divisions created by the Oslo Accords. In March and May of 2018,
Palestinians in the Gaza Strip conducted weekly demonstrations at the border
between the Gaza Strip and Israel. The final protest coincided with the seventieth
anniversary of the Nakba, the Palestinian exodus that accompanied Israeli
independence. While most of the protesters were peaceful, some stormed the
perimeter fence and threw rocks and other objects. According to the United Nations,
183 demonstrators were killed and more than 6,000 were wounded by live ammunition.

Also in May of 2018, fighting broke out between Hamas and the Israeli military in
what became the worst period of violence since 2014. Before reaching a cease-fire,
militants in Gaza fired over one hundred rockets into Israel; Israel responded with
strikes on more than fifty targets in Gaza during the twenty-four-hour flare-up.

The Donald J. Trump administration set achieving an Israeli-Palestinian deal as a

foreign policy priority. In 2018, the Trump administration canceled funding for the
UN Relief and Works Agency, which provides aid to Palestinian refugees,
and relocated the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, a reversal of a
longstanding U.S. policy. The decision to move the U.S. embassy was met with
applause from the Israeli leadership but was condemned by Palestinian leaders and
others in the Middle East and Europe. Israel considers the “complete and united
Jerusalem” its capital, while Palestinians claim [PDF] East Jerusalem as the capital
of a future Palestinian state. In January 2020, the Trump administration released
its long-awaited “Peace to Prosperity” plan, which was rejected by Palestinians due
to its support for future Israeli annexation of settlements in the West Bank and
control over an “undivided” Jerusalem.

In August and September 2020, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and then
Bahrain agreed to normalize relations with Israel, making them only the third and
fourth countries in the region—following Egypt in 1979 and Jordan in 1994—to do so.
The agreements, named the Abraham Accords, came more than eighteen months after the
United States hosted Israel and several Arab states for ministerial talks in Warsaw,
Poland, about the future of peace in the Middle East. Palestinian leader Mahmoud
Abbas rejected the accords; Hamas also rejected the agreements.

In October 2020, an Israeli court ruled that several Palestinian families living in
Sheikh Jarrah—a neighborhood in East Jerusalem—were to be evicted by May 2021 with
their land handed over to Jewish families. In February 2021, several Palestinian
families from Sheikh Jarrah filed an appeal to the court
ruling, prompting protests around the appeal hearings, the ongoing legal battle
around property ownership, and the forcible displacement of Palestinians from their
homes in Jerusalem.

In late April 2021, Palestinians began demonstrating in the streets of Jerusalem to

protest the pending evictions, and residents of Sheikh Jarrah—along with other
activists—began to host nightly sit-ins. In early May, after a court ruled in favor
of the evictions, the protests expanded, with Israeli police deploying force against
demonstrators. On May 7, following weeks of daily demonstrations and rising
tensions between protesters, Israeli settlers, and police during the month of
Ramadan, violence broke out at the al-Aqsa Mosque compound in Jerusalem, with
Israeli police using stun grenades, rubber bullets, and water cannons in a clash
with protestors that left hundreds of Palestinians wounded.

After the clashes in Jerusalem’s Old City, tensions increased throughout East
Jerusalem, compounded by the celebration of Jerusalem Day. On May 10, after several
consecutive days of violence throughout Jerusalem and the use of lethal and
nonlethal force by Israeli police, Hamas, the militant group which governs Gaza,
and other Palestinian militant groups launched hundreds of rockets into Israeli
territory. Israel responded with artillery bombardments and airstrikes, several of
which killed more than twenty Palestinians, against targets in Gaza. While claiming
to target Hamas, other militants, and their infrastructure—including tunnels and
rocket launchers—Israel expanded its aerial campaign and struck non-military
infrastructure including residential buildings, media headquarters,
and refugee and healthcare facilities.

On May 21, 2021, Israel and Hamas agreed to a cease-fire, brokered by Egypt, with
both sides claiming victory and no reported violations. More than two hundred and
fifty Palestinians were killed and nearly two thousand others wounded, and at least
thirteen Israelis were killed over the eleven days of fighting. Authorities in Gaza
estimate that tens of millions of dollars of damage was done, and the United Nations
estimates that more than 72,000 Palestinians were displaced by the fighting.

Concerns
There is concern that a third intifada could break out and that renewed tensions will
escalate into large-scale violence. The United States has an interest in protecting
the security of its long-term ally Israel and achieving a lasting deal between
Israel and the Palestinian territories, which would improve regional security.

Recent Developments
The most far-right and religious government in Israel’s history was inaugurated in
late December 2022. The coalition government is led by Benjamin ‘Bibi’ Netanyahu
and his Likud party and comprises two ultra-Orthodox parties and three far-right
parties, including the Religious Zionism party, an ultranationalist faction
affiliated with the West Bank settler movement. To reach a governing majority,
Netanyahu made a variety of concessions to his far-right partners. Opponents have
criticized the government’s stated prioritization of the expansion and development
of Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, which would significantly erode
the prospects for a two-state solution. Netanyahu appointed Itamar Ben-Gvir, the
head of the Jewish Power party, who was convicted of racist incitement against
Arabs, as national security minister, and Bezalel Smotrich, the head of the
Religious Zionism faction, to a ministerial post overseeing West Bank settlement
policy. The governing coalition has also endorsed discrimination against LGBTQ+
people on religious grounds, and it voted to limit judicial oversight of the
government in May 2023 after a delay due to nationwide protests in March.

2022 marked the most conflict-related deaths for both Israelis and Palestinians
since 2015, and violence has continued to escalate in 2023, with the West Bank on
track for its deadliest year since 2005 amid almost daily Israeli incursions.
Palestinians and Israeli settlers have clashed on several occasions, and tensions
could worsen after Israel approved five thousand new settler homes in June 2023. The
Israeli military has also escalated its operations, including raiding the al-Aqsa
mosque twice in one day, wounding thirty-five in a Ramallah operation, and firing
missiles from a helicopter in the Jenin refugee camp. In May, Israel battled Gazan
militants for five days, with nearly two thousand combined missile launches by Hamas
and Israeli forces. Then, in July, Israel deployed nearly two thousand troops and
conducted drone strikes in a large-scale raid on the Jenin refugee camp, killing
twelve Palestinians and wounding fifty. Israel, which lost one soldier in the
operation, claimed all those killed were militants. While withdrawing, Israeli
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the incursion was “not a one-off” incident;
Israel intends to prevent the camp from serving as a safe haven for Jenin Brigades
and other militant groups. Hamas responded to the raid by carrying out an attack in
Tel Aviv and launching missiles at Israel.