AboutPierre-Alexandre De Bavay M.A. Expertise I can answer any question that deals with geopolitics, political stability and the role of big powers in the Middle East. My strongest background deals with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict but I have a good knowledge of the region going from the Caucasus to Egypt, the Arabic Peninsula and Central Asia. Even if your question does not directly deal with this, I will try to answer it anyway.
Experience I worked for the Center for American Studies in Brussels and for the European Institute for International Relations as political analyst.
Organizations CAS, EIIR
Education/Credentials BA Political Science
MA International Relations
MA American Studies
Question Hi, I'm not exactly sure on how the hatred between these two groups started and I was hoping you could enlighten me on the subject?
Answer Hi Evan,
The conflict is basically rooted in the sionist movement : jewish populations mostly fleeing Europe to have their own land in the region of their ancestors. There have always been Jews that lived in the region, even though their ancient "state" disappeared with the arab invasion during Middle Ages. This might be seen as the long term context.
Now as regards the present state of Israel, the situation is more recent. The hatred takes us back to the Balfour declaration written in 1917 under the british authority in the region. This declaration favours the creation of a jewish state which causes some Jews (mainly from Russia and Eastern Europe were pogroms were regular) to migrate and strenghten their own community. There was no state of Israel as such, but a "political autorisation" to develop a community. At first, the relations with Arabs were not as bad as they are now...The reality of a Jewish state came decades later, even if this idea had been developed all along the 19th century by Theodor Herzl and other Jewish figures.
The true opposition between Jews and Arabs in the region began to develop during the 1930' as sionism was becoming a large scale movement. The result of this was the creation of Jewish armies facing Arab militia's, een if European powers (especially Britain) were still present in the region. The final step of sionism and of the hatred between Arabs and Jews was the creation of Israel as a sovereign state in 1948. After WWII and the genocide organized by the Nazis, many remaining Jews decided to move to Palestine. The Jewish population began to rise dramatically and the state of Israel was therefore created after a dabate within the UNO. A state for the Arabs of Palestine could have been created, but the local population did not recognize Israel.
This leads us to the situation we know now : Palestinians have no state but a territory split in two (Gaza and West Bank). History since 1948 shows that many wars took place between Israel and the Arab world : 1948, 1967, 1973,...Not to mention the recent Hezbollah attacks in 2006 and Israel's regular invasions of the Palestinian territories like they did in Gaza last year.
