When we say Israel Palestine conflict it sounds like that there are just two sides but in reality its way more complicated than that.
The Israeli Palestine conflict basically encompasses four different areas, there’s obviously Israel, the Gaza strip, the West bank and east Jerusalem. The history of conflict is really long and complicated as for last several decades there has been fighting over which people are entitled to which bits of the land.
The Israel Palestine Conflict
The way things currently stand the core issue is that the Israeli military occupies Palestinian territories and there are various Palestinian movements that want that to end.
Key Palestinian political players
The main players are Fatah, the political group that is basically in charge of running the west bank and on the other side there is Hamas which is an Islamist movement that is in charge of running the Gaza strip.
The political ideologies of Fatah and Hamas are not particularly compatible which makes it difficult to be a ‘united Palestinian front’ against the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories. When we say occupation what that actually means is the Israeli military presence in the Palestinian territories.
Daily lives of Palestinians who live in these three different areas looks completely different, it is much more mixed up and much more complicated than that of just Israel versus the Palestinians. Palestinians living in east Jerusalem generally don’t have Israeli citizenship so they still face a lot of difficulties in everyday life accessing services.
To Israel, west and east Jerusalem are both part of Israel but to Palestinian and most of the international community east Jerusalem is the capital of a future Palestinian state. Palestinians living in Gaza arguably have the rawest deal, it’s the home to two million people. People often talk about Gaza as being the world’s most biggest open-air prison.
Israel has total control of everything that comes in and out. 97% of the water is undrinkable, there has also been several rounds of devastating war that these people have to deal with. In the west bank 60% is totally controlled by Israeli military.
Where do Israeli settlements come in?
On the other side of the conflict there’s obviously Israel, on paper every Israel government for the last 30 years has said that it wants a two-state solution, but in reality ever Israeli government has continued to build settlements, home to Jewish people in the West Bank.
It completely negates the possibility of a two-state solution. Prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has had no interest in pursuing the peace process, at all. The Israeli leadership is right when it says that they
don’t have legitimate partners for peace on Palestinians side as there has been very little appetite on the Palestinian side either to actually resolve the conflict.
For the last fifteen years the actual large scale warfare and fighting has been concentrated on the Gaza strip. Devastating rounds of war between Hamas and Israel with rocket fire on both sides.
It is basically impossible to predict what is going to happen in a place this complicated as the world
is witnessing violent and gruesome incidents and bombing in Gaza that the world cannot ignore.
On top of everything whenever there’s religion included it has never calmed any situation when there’s a clash. The main question before discussing anything is about power and the difference in power and what is the responsibility of a state when it has this much power.