In a nutshell, they’re fighting because they both claim the same small piece of territory (see slideshow above). Israelis and Palestinians have been at loggerheads since Israel’s founding in 1948, but the roots of the conflict go back much further.
In the first century A.D., Jews were expelled from their ancient Middle East homeland by the Romans; for nearly two millennia, Jews lived in exile in Europe, other parts of the Middle East, and elsewhere. At the end of the 19th century, Jews known as Zionists began arguing that Jews needed a state of their own. When 6 million Jews were murdered in the Holocaust during World War II, many nations embraced the idea of creating a Jewish state in British-ruled Palestine, the Jews’ historical homeland.
However, over the previous 2,000 years, their ancient homeland hadn’t remained empty. So when significant numbers of Jews began moving back in the early 20th century, tensions erupted with the Arabs already living there.
In 1947, a year before British rule over Palestine was set to end, the United Nations voted to divide the area into an Arab state and a Jewish state (see slideshow above). The U.N. plan designated Jerusalem as a special international zone not belonging to either country. The Jews accepted the partition plan, but the Arabs rejected it.
When the British left and Israel declared independence in 1948, Arab states—including Egypt, Syria, and Iraq—attacked. Israel prevailed and, in the course of the war, it ended up controlling more territory than the U.N. plan had called for. The victory secured Israel’s existence—along with the seeds of Arab anger.
In the seven decades since, Israel and the Palestinians (the Arabs who are from the region that the British called Palestine) have been locked in a conflict that periodically explodes into violence, including three wars that followed Israel’s war of independence. Despite the efforts of many American presidents to broker a peace agreement, there’s no end in sight for the conflict. The 4.8 million Palestinians who live in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip continue to push for a state of their own.