With social media, our world is more connected than ever before. This means opinions flow fast, knowing no borders. But when foreigners start to mingle in a country’s sensitive issues without micro and macro context, it only adds to unsolicited sensationalism rather than a solution. Most of the time, people out of the border don’t even consider the solution or have an interest in knowing the micro and macro context of the issue. They simply want to share their two cents in the middle of trending hashtags, all to just getting social media recognition in return. Unfortunately, it’s a behavior social media platforms tend to bring out in users time and again.

After the ceasefire was accepted by Israel on 21 May 2021; I spent a month studying the history of Israel and its people along with the state of Palestine before penning this article. This article is an unbiased perspective of what I learned during my intensive research.

The most interesting connection among all major territorial disputes of the modern world has England’s dreadful colonial history. Some examples are India-Pakistan, China-Hong Kong and, Israel-Palestine.

The name ‘Israel’ is no random word, it has an immense historical and religious connection. According to historians, the discovery of the earliest use of the noun ‘Israel’ was an inscription carved on stone in Egypt, approximately 1,200 years before Christ.

Christianity, Judaism, and Islam are all Abrahamic religions, meaning they all accept the tradition of God, Yahweh, and Allah respectively revealed himself to Abraham. Judaism is the oldest of all three.

The Israel-Palestine is not just a territorial or political conflict but a religious one between the three largest sects of Abrahamic religion.

Global mainstream media is no longer neutral. They shamelessly blow toot for anyone from whom they'd receive benefits, or identify ideologically.

In the modern world, Palestine nor Israel formally existed as a country before the First World War (1914-1918) during the Ottoman era. Palestinians are essentially Islam following sect of Arabs.

There is no Jewish country in the world other than Israel whereas, there are 30 Islamic nations of which 6 countries follow Sharia Law. Many leaders from these countries on numerous occasions, most recently Sayyid Ali Hosseini Khamenei, head of Iran sought outright destruction of Israel and its people.

Israel since its recognition has accomplished phenomenal results in every field. It built the world’s most formidable intelligence organization, Mossad. Israel invented and build a desalination plant to get fresh water from the sea so as to not depend on the Jordan river flowing from hostile neighbors. Not many know that it is the startup capital of the world with globally recognized brands like WIX, Fiverr, Elementor, and Sisense founded in Tel Aviv and, gave Hollywood stars like Gal Gaddot. Israel is thriving would be an understatement.

On the other hand, Palestine, according to Israeli supporters has been an excuse for the Arab nations to attack Israel. They rejected the two-state solution 7 times keeping the Palestinian people deprived. They never empowered them nor the Palestinians themselves progressed in any field. Most of the region still depends on aid from global humanitarian organizations like the UN, IMF, WHO, etc. for day-to-day life however it keeps its arsenal fully loaded to attack thriving Israel.

So, how did it lead to this? Below are few highlights from the centuries-long conflict.

The Beginning:

Being the first Abrahamic religion does not give any points to Judaism following Jews in the modern territorial conflict. Hence spending time finding where, when, and what came first has the least value. However, an interesting shift in belief during the middle ages [500 AD to 1500 AD] took shape. The Christians clearly and increasingly placed blame for the death of Jesus on the Jews, instead of the Romans’ culpability, the primary reason for antisemitism even in the modern world which led to exodus and persecution of Jews from one region to another throughout history. It is unclear why Jews became the target of early evangelism instead of the Romans. When the youngest of Abrahamic religions, Islam was born during the 7th Century, they too sided with the Christian narrative. This tendency seems to have increased dramatically after the Jewish–Roman [50 BC] wars and continued to be witnessed as recently as during the Second World War [1939 - 1945] perpetrated by Adolf Hitler. Since the 7th century Arab conquest, the modern-day state of the Israel area was colonized mostly by Sunni Muslims. Despite the lack of a formally recognized country, these people came together to form a population that was referred to as Palestinians. There were sizable Jewish and Christian populations too that had to pay Islamic taxes (Jizya) in order to avoid various persecution, for centuries.

The Seed

As the first Industrial Revolution swept European countries in the 18th century, the Jewish community along with doing well for themselves began to desire a statehood that never existed in history. This desire could be attributed mostly because the Jews got economically empowered. According to historians, in 1896, an Austro-Hungarian Jewish activist, Theodor Herzl, published a pamphlet titled Der Judenstaat (The Jewish State), the first-ever idea in modern history talking about a Jewish country. As various influential Jewish people (e.g. Baron Edmond de Rothschild, Nathan Birnbaum) began contemplating a place to settle and build a country to call their own, they found a helping hand in the form of the Balfour Declaration by the British in 1917.

The Plan

It is fascinating to know that Jews didn't begin nor always considered the present-day territories of Israel to settle and make home despite; Jerusalem their holy site, being continuous inhabitants of the land since their inception thousands of years ago and, gods promise of the land (the Levant) to the patriarch Abraham. In fact, many contemplated far away lands like Argentina, Canada, and Africa. However, in 1905, at the Seventh Zionist Congress in Basel, the dispute was settled in favor of a Jewish state in current-day Israel rather than some part of the world with no religious or historical connection for Jewish people. The well-to-do Jewish community began migrating and purchasing land from the local, willing inhabitants. Of course, there was strong opposition from Islamic Palestinians.

The Resistance

The Jewish community had begun to migrate in small numbers after the Zionist Congress vote in 1905 however, as the influx increased after getting support from the British that was overpowering the Ottoman rule in the region, local Islamic Palestinians began to resist. One of the most famous responses was the founding of a news publication known as Falastin in 1911 which began exposing the agenda of Jewish settlers coming from various parts of neighboring countries and warned Palestinians against selling their properties. However, since the Jewish migrants offered a good price and proceeded as per the law of the land under British rule at the time, poor Palestinians couldn't resist. With each passing year, the demographic change was evident that led to aggressive and violent opposition towards their own people, the Palestinians landowners who sold to Jewish settlers.

The Struggle

When the Ottoman Empire finally fell in 1923, Arabs were no longer the controlling stake in the middle east region. The subsequent rise of the British Empire across the world gave them the power to shape the world borders as we know them today. By 1930, militant Muslim preacher Izz al-Din al-Qassam mobilized Islam following Palestinians, priming them for jihad against non-muslim occupants of Palestine, especially Jews. On the other hand, the Jews who had been serving and fighting in the British army were trained and smart modern soldiers. The Jewish population prepared much more thoroughly, building a proto-state alongside nascent political and economic structures, having already established a defense organization, Haganah. By this point, the Islam following Palestinians were in conflict with both the Jews and the British authorities in Palestine, reaching a crescendo in a mass revolt in 1936. The British army crushed the revolt by 1939, but resistance and preparation for further attacks by both communities remained the pattern for the rest of the 1930s and throughout the Second World War.

By the time of the Second World War, the British had shifted their policy from support for Zionism to blocking Jewish immigration to Palestine. They did this, again, to bolster support for their war effort, this time from Arab allies. In the face of Jewish people escaping the unfolding Holocaust in Europe, this caused growing resentment and conflict with Zionists who were trying to save European Jews by helping them get to Palestine. Britain was known to widely use it's divide and rule tactic.

After WWII ended in 1945, the Jewish population in Palestine had become sufficiently powerful and mobilized to fight Britain, and good Jewish preparation won the day. Jewish tactical attacks against British targets forced Britain to reconsider its geopolitical priorities. One of the infamous 1946 attacks of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem that housed a British headquarters was blown up, killing almost 100 people. In 1947, Britain decided to leave Palestine. Meanwhile, survivors of the Holocaust from Nazi Germany who emigrated to Palestine further boosted the territory’s Jewish population.

In the November of the same year, the UNGA passed a resolution that proposed the partition of Palestine into Jewish and Arab states. Under the plan, Jerusalem would be an internationalized city because it is of importance to all three major sects of Abrahamic religion. The suggestion was accepted by Jewish representatives in the region mainly because it offered partial international acceptance of their aims of establishing a home state. Palestinians and Arab groups rejected it probably because they already have enough countries in the name of their religion. Below 50% equity in the territory is as good as no deal. They've always wanted it all, not caring for the Jewish people.

The official birth of the State of Israel

In May 1948, as British troops left Palestine, Zionist leader (soon to become the first Israeli PM) David Ben-Gurion declared the formation of the state of Israel, at which point all neighboring Islamic countries of Iraq, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria attacked Israel in support of their brethren Palestinians but to the surprise of the world, Israel triumphed against all odds.

Israel was finally born after millennia of no territorial belongingness. 

Fighting against the new Israeli army continued until early 1949. Local Palestinian militia along with Arab neighbors till this day try to instigate and pick fights with Israelis but the fact is, they are no match. In general, though the combined force of Arab may look impressive on paper, however, their tactical warfare and the political unity of their commanders across different national forces continue to be poor. Suicide bombing, using civilians, helium balloons, and other low-cost ways of keeping the war alive will never match the advantage Jews had when serving in the British army which they further mastered in military tactics, bright minds who invented new military technology, and absolute unity among all Jews in the country. Prime example, the formidable Six-Day War of 1967. In the last 70 of Israel's existence, there have been numerous fights and attacks, and every time Israel has been unmatched.

In fact, this hard-earned accomplishment is now used against Israel by pretentious personalities to garner sympathy and awe for poor Palestinians and themselves respectively.

The hidden Elephant in the equation

People around the world believe that the Israel-Palestine conflict involves the Jews and the Muslims. The unknown truth is, Christians believers have as much stake in the conflict as the other two sects. America has been a firm supporter of Israel throughout its official existence predominantly because of the strong, powerful, and the extremely influential Jewish lobby. But, that's not all. It's just half of the equation. The other half comes from the evangelical church. As I dug deeper into the reason, the fascinating historic religious connection among these three major sects of Abrahamic religions became further extraordinary. The Israel-Palestine conflict is not just about border or territory control - it's also about Judgment day. And, religious beliefs are extremely important for people. Wars have been fought to defend religions and, this one is not much different.

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