The origins of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and the war in the Gaza Strip

Abstract

The article is devoted to the emergence of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and its most recent and bloody phase – the war in the Gaza Strip. The facts and details of these recent events have not yet been sufficiently studied, but we can understand the root causes of the acts of violence, terror, military operations and wars that are shaking the Middle East, including Gaza. We will talk about the origins of the Palestinian problem. Not only has it not been resolved in the last almost 80 years, but it has also been escalated today more than ever. This was manifested in the real war that broke out on October 7, 2023, in the Gaza Strip between the Palestinian movement Hamas and the Israeli army (IDF), which led to the military actions in Lebanon and to the Iranian-Israeli clash. The study shows that extremism and terror of some Palestinian movements, in particular, Hamas, did not arise from scratch. The article presents the facts of how Zionist organizations, even before the creation of the State of Israel, started carrying out the acts of terror on the land of Palestine, and during the first Arab-Israeli war of 1948–1949. Those actions acquired, according to not only Arab, but also foreign researchers, the scale and features of genocide. Violence engendered retaliatory violence, and terror – counterterrorism. As a result, the conflict has turned into one of the longest and bloodiest in modern history. The article is based on Russian and foreign sources and literature, as well as on the author’s own materials obtained during the field studies on multiple business trips to the Middle East, including Israel and Palestine.