ABSTRACT
The conflict is about how to divide the territory of Palestine between two peoples and the dual-state structure of the partition. The state of Israel was in 1948 and is internationally recognized by all but some Arab states; the other is the Palestinian state in the making which does not yet exist. Its constitutional design, borders, and relationship to Israel have been bitterly and violently contested for decades. Since the Arab revolt for independence against the British mandate in 1936-9 and the creation of a Jewish national homeland in Palestine, the conflict has engendered a three-cornered civil war (Arabs against the British, Jews against the British, and Arabs against the Jews), the war for Israeli independence in 1948-9 between the Jews and the Arab states and the Palestinians, the 1956 war, the 1967 Six Day War, the 1973 Yom Kippur war, and the 1982 invasion of Lebanon. In 1937, the British Peel Commission had concluded that partition and population exchange were the only means of establishing peace in Palestine. After World War II in 1947 when the Arab states rejected the UN partition plan and Israel declared independence on May 14, 1948, war broke out and was concluded with an armistice in 1949 that left the victorious Israelis with 77 percent of the territory of Mandatory Palestine, including most of Jerusalem. Jordan was in control of the West Bank and Egypt in the Gaza Strip. In the Six Day War of 1967, Israel gained control of 1 million Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, known as the Occupied Territories (OTs).
