The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a long-standing territorial dispute over the Holy Land, a Middle Eastern region with great religious and historical significance to Christians, Jews, and Muslims. The conflict dates back to the end of the nineteenth century, and 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.
The current Israeli-Palestinian status quo began following Israeli military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza in the 1967 Six-Day War, known as the Palestinian territories. The conflict is rooted in competing claims to the Holy Land and includes disputes over borders, Jerusalem, security, and Palestinian refugees. Mutual distrust and significant disagreements are deep over basic issues, as is the reciprocal skepticism about the other sides commitment to upholding obligations in an eventual bilateral agreement. Since 2006, the Palestinian side has been fractured by conflict between Fatah, the traditionally dominant party, and its later electoral challenger, Hamas, a militant Islamist group that gained control of the Gaza Strip.
The conflict has been marked by violence and periodic outbreaks of war. In 2022, it 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 and Gaza Strip experiencing the deadliest year since the second intifada ended in 2005. The outlook for Israeli-Palestinian negotiations is bleak, with divisions between the two sides further aggravated by the Abraham Accords, the 2021 Israel-Hamas conflict, and the escalation in violence that began in 2022.
