Israeli claims to the land of Israel/Palestine go back to the first millennium BCE when the ancient Israelites establish a kingdom in what is today Israel and the West Bank. Palestinian claims to the same land go back at least until the Arab/Muslim conquest in the seventh century CE, plus what some claim to be a connection to the pre-Israelite inhabitants of the land. Consequently, the modern conflict has roots which go back over three thousand years.
In the late 19th century, modern Jewish nationalism (Zionism) develops in order to establish a homeland wherein Jews would constitute a majority and have political independence. At the same time, Arab-Nationalism develops in order to establish an Arab state(s) with political independence from Ottoman control. Following WWI and the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, the League of Nations establish the British mandate over the newly defined territory of Palestine. As the administrative and governing authority between 1920 and 1948, the British attempt to pacify the conflicting national aspirations of the Jewish and Palestinian Arab populations. They are unsuccessful and leave the matter to the United Nations.
In 1947, the United Nations votes to partition Palestine into two states (one Arab, one Jewish). The plan is rejected, the British withdraw on May 14, 1948, and Israel declares statehood. Over the next 50 years, five wars and two intifadas transpire. A decade of peace negotiations, beginning with the 1991 Madrid Conference and ending with the 2001 Taba Talks, is unable to bring resolution. The conflict remains a focus of international attention to this day.
The topics below are arranged so as to introduce the uninitiated reader into the basic themes and sequence of the conflict.
II. Early Conflict
"The conflict between Jews and Palestinian Arabs began in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, when Jews from around the world began flocking back to their ancient biblical homeland in Palestine, driven by a modern Jewish nationalist ideology known as Zionism [see below]. The Zionists called for the ingathering of the Jews from around the world in Palestine and the creation there of a modern Jewish nation-state that would put the Jews on a par with all the other nations of the world. Most of the early Zionists either ignored the presence of the Arabs already living in Palestine or assumed they could either be bought off or would eventually submit to Jewish domination."
"They [Jewish settlers] arrived in a desolate, sparsely populated region and drained the swamps, irrigated the desert, grew crops and built cities. They introduced industry, libraries, hospitals, art galleries, universities -- and the concept of individual rights."
"When Theodore Herzl, the founder of Zionism, spoke of 'a people without a land' looking for 'a land without a people', he was not aware of the presence of an Arab population in Palestine or its future evolution."
-- Shimon Peres "Why Israel Needs a Palestinian State," La Monde Diplomatique 1998
III. Zionism (Jewish Nationalism)
"The father of political Zionism and the visionary of the Jewish state was Theodor Herzl (1860 - 1904), a Hungarian-born Jew who worked as a journalist and a playwright in Vienna, the capital of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Herzl was an assimilated Jew with no particular interest in Judaism or Jewish affairs. It was the virulent anti-semitism surrounding the Dreyfus Affair in the early 1890s, which he covered as the Paris correspondent of a Vienna daily newspaper, that aroused his interest in the Jewish problem. He concluded that assimilation and emancipation could not work, because the Jews were a nation. Their problem was not economic or social or religious but national. It followed rationally from these premises that the only solution was for the Jews to leave the diaspora and acquire a territory over which they would exercise sovereignty and establish a state of their own."
"The term Zionism, named after Zion, the hill in ancient Jerusalem upon which the royal palace of King David was built, was coined by Nathan Birnbaum in 1893. It was applied to the Jewish nationalist movement that aimed to create a Jewish state or national center in Ottoman Palestine, the historic homeland of the ancestors of Jews. Until then the aspiration to return to Zion had been couched in religious terms and expressed in the liturgy. The movement gained ground among the Jews of Europe in the nineteenth century, when the political emancipation of the Jewish communities and their assimilation into the mainstream culture failed to secure them full acceptance."
-- Dilip Hiro The Essential Middle East / A Comprehensive Guide "Zionism" 2003
"I believe that zionism is racism, because in building Israel, the zionists were revising history, embracing the notion of racial superiority, an ideology that has empowered them to discriminate, with all of its associated social ills, injustices, and moral bankruptcy."
-- Rabee Sahyoun "Why Zionism Is Racism," Media Monitors Network May 8, 2001
"Negating Zionism, by claiming that Zionism equals racism, denies the Jews the right to identify, understand and imagine themselves -- and consequently behave as -- a nation. Anti-Zionists deny Jews a right that they all too readily bestow on others, first of all Palestinians."
-- Emanuele Ottolenghi "Anti-Zionism is Anti-Semitism," Guardian Nov. 29, 2003
"To criticize policies of the Government of Israel - or of any country - is legitimate, even vital; indeed as a democratic state many Israelis do just that. But there is profound difference between criticizing a country, and denying it's right to exist. Anti-Zionism, the denial of Jews the basic right to a home, is nothing but antisemitism, pure and simple."
-- Michael Melchior From Israel's key statement at the UN's World Conference against Racism in Durban, South Africa Sep. 3, 2001
"People of goodwill can disagree politically -- even to the extent of arguing over Israel's future as a Jewish state. Equating anti-Zionism with anti-semitism can also, in its own way, poison the political debate."
-- Brian Klug "No, anti-Zionism is not anti-semitism" Guardian Dec. 3, 2003
IV. Palestinian Nationalism
"Under the impact of rapid, momentous, and unsettling changes during the period from the outset of World War I to some time early on in the British mandate for Palestine, at the outside in 1922 or 1923, the sense of political and national identification of most politically conscious, literate, and urban Palestinians underwent a sequence of major transformations. The end result was a strong and growing national identification with Palestine, as the Arab residents of the country increasingly came to 'imagine' themselves as part of a single community...In succeeding decades, this identification with Palestine was to be developed and refined significantly, as Palestinian nationalism grew and developed."
Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern National Consciousness, 1997
"During most of the 1800s, the political identity of the people of Palestine was of several overlapping types: a commitment to local Arab leadership; awareness of the distant rule of the Ottoman Turks; and a growing but still diffuse sense of connection with the larger Arab community. For Muslim Palestinians, there was also a sense of belonging to the Islamic millet, but because the Ottoman Turks were also Muslims, this did not serve to differentiate the Palestinian Arabs as a national group. Initially, Palestinians were part of the general movement of Arab nationalism that engulfed the Levant. With the breakup of the Ottoman Empire and the division of the Levant into areas of French and British control, Arab hopes of a Greater Syria encompassing the entire Levant region were quashed, and a separate Palestinian national identity, which was already present, began to flourish."
-- Deborah J. Gerner One Land, Two Peoples: The Conflict Over Palestine, 1994
"Had it not been for the pressures exerted on the Arabs of Palestine by the Zionist movement, the very concept of a Palestinian people would not have developed; and Palestinians quite accurately understand their society's essential, existential status as the direct result of Jewish political rejuvenation and settlement."
"Important though Zionism was in the formation of Palestinian identity -- as the primary 'other' faced by the Palestinians for much of this century -- the argument that Zionism was the main factor in provoking the emergence of Palestinian identity ignores one key fact: a universal process was unfolding in the Middle East during this period, involving an increasing identification with the new states created by the post-World War I partitions."
-- Rashid Khalidi Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern National Consciousness, 1997
V. British Involvement
"Under the stress of the [First] World War the British Government made promises to Arabs and Jews in order to obtain their support. On the strength of those promises both parties formed certain expectations... An irrepressible conflict has arisen between two national communities within the narrow bounds of one small country. There is no common ground between them. Their national aspirations are incompatible. The Arabs desire to revive the traditions of the Arab golden age. The Jews desire to show what they can achieve when restored to the land in which the Jewish nation was born. Neither of the two national ideals permits of combination in the service of a single State.
The conflict has grown steadily more bitter since 1920 and the process will continue. Conditions inside Palestine especially the systems of education, are strengthening the national sentiment of the two peoples. The bigger and more prosperous they grow the greater will be their political ambitions, and the conflict is aggravated by the uncertainty of the future. Who in the end will govern Palestine?"
-- Peel Commission Summary of the Report of the Palestine Royal Commission 1937
"A de facto Jewish homeland already existed in parts of Palestine, and its recognition by the Balfour Declaration became a matter of binding international law when the League of Nations made it part of its mandate."
"The 1917 Balfour Declaration and the UN's 1947 Partition Decree were both exercises in ultra vires, which means surpassing one's authority, and powers."
"In 1947 Britain decided to hand the matter [of Palestine] over to the United Nations. A special committee of the United Nations sent out to study the problem produced a plan of partition on terms more favorable to the Zionists than that of 1937 [Peel Commission] had been. This was accepted by the General Assembly of the United Nations in November 1947, with very active support from the United States and from Russia, which wanted the British to withdraw from Palestine. The Arab members of the United Nations and the Palestinian Arabs rejected it, and, faced once more with the impossibility of finding a policy which both Arabs and Jews would accept, Britain decided to withdraw from Palestine on a fixed date, 14 May 1948...
As the date came nearer, British authority inevitably decreased and fighting broke out, in which the Jews soon gained the upper hand. This in turn led to a decision by the neighboring Arab states to intervene, and thus a series of local conflicts turned into a war. On 14 May the Jewish community declared its independence as the state of Israel...and Egyptian, Jordanian, Iraqi, Syrian and Lebanese forces moved into the mainly Arab parts of the country. In a situation where there were no fixed frontiers or clear divisions of population, fighting took place between the new Israeli army and those of the Arab state, and in four campaigns interrupted by cease-fires Israel was able to occupy the greater part of the country."
"The tragedy of European Jewry became a source of strength for Zionism. The moral case for a home for the Jewish people in Palestine was widely accepted from the beginning; after the Holocaust it became unassailable. The poet Robert Frost defined a home as the place where, if you have to go there, they have to let you in. Few people disputed the right of the Jews to a home after the trauma to which they had been subjected in Central Europe...
On the one hand, the Holocaust confirmed the conviction of the Zionists that they had justice on their side in the struggle for Palestine; on the other, it converted international public opinion to the idea of an independent Jewish state."
"In Europe... anti-Semitism climaxed in the Holocaust. For anyone to deny the horrendous experience of anti-Semitism and the Holocaust is unacceptable. We don't want anybody's history of suffering to go unrecorded and unacknowledged.
On the other hand, there's a great difference between acknowledging Jewish oppression and using that as a cover for the oppression of another people.
One has to be able to distinguish between what happened to the Jews in World War II, and in Europe in the centuries of open and institutionalized anti-Semitism, and what people feel about the terrible practices of military occupation and dispossession in Palestine."
"The first Arab-Israeli war [1948], in addition to securing the state of Israel, created about three-quarters of a million homeless Palestinian Arabs. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinian Arabs fled from their homes, or were expelled, during the Jewish War of Independence. At the end of hostilities early in 1949, the United Nations estimated that there were 726,000 Arab refugees from Israeli-controlled territories."
"Why 700,000 people became refugees was hotly disputed between Israel and its supporters and the Arabs and theirs. Israeli spokesmen -- including 'official' historians and writers of textbooks -- maintained that the Arabs had fled 'voluntarily,' or because the Palestinian and Arab states' leaders had urged or ordered them to leave, to clear the ground for the invasion of May 15 [1948] and enable their spokesmen to claim that they had been systematically expelled. Arab spokesmen countered that Israel had systematically and with pre-meditation expelled the refugees. Documentation that surfaced in massive quantities during the 1980s in Israeli and Western archives has demonstrated that neither 'official' version is accurate or sufficient."
"During the war of 1948, some eight hundred thousand of the approximately nine hundred thousand Palestinians who originally resided in the area that became Israel, were forced to leave their homes to seek refuge in the West Bank and Gaza Strip Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt and further afield."
"The Arab armies entered Palestine [in 1948] to protect the Palestinians from the Zionist tyranny but, instead, they abandoned them, forced them to emigrate and to leave their homeland, and threw them into prisons similar to the ghettos in which the Jews used to live."
-- Mahmoud Abbas, PhD Falastine a-Thaura The then official journal of the PLO in Beirut Mar. 1976
"It goes without saying that the [Palestinian] right of return is a sacred and inalienable right that cannot be extinguished with the passage of time nor by any political agreement."
"Neither under the international conventions, nor under the major UN resolutions, nor under the relevant agreements between the parties, do the Palestinian refugees have a right to return to Israel."
-- Ruth Lapidoth, PhD "Do Palestinian Refugees Have a Right to Return to Israel?" Israeli M.F.A. website
VIII. 1967 and the Resurgence of Palestinian Nationalism
"In June 1967, Israel launched a preemptive strike against Egypt, Syria, and Jordan, after [Egyptian President] Nasser had declared his intention to annihilate the Jewish state and forged military alliances with Syria and Jordan for that purpose, building up troop concentrations along his border with Israel and blockading shipping to the Israeli port of Eilat. The six-day war that followed Israel's surprise attack ended with the Israeli army occupying Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, Syria's Golan Heights, and Jordan's West Bank.
In the wake of this massive 1967 Arab defeat, a revolutionary mood swept through the Arab world. One immediate impact of that new mood was that radical independent underground Palestinian guerilla organizations -- known in Arabic as fedayeen -- which had sprung up in the late 1950s and 1960s outside Arab government controls, were able to take over the PLO apparatus from the Arab regimes. In 1969, an obscure Palestinian guerrilla by the name of Yasir Arafat, who headed the al-Fatah ('Victory' in Arabic) guerrilla groups, was elected chairman of the PLO's executive committee."
"An umbrella body, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) was set up in early 1964, to enable Palestinians to play their part in liberating Palestine and determining their own future... The PLO's importance increased in the aftermath of the defeat suffered by the Arab states in the June 1967 Arab-Israeli War. A change in the charter in 1968, which declared armed struggle to be the only way to liberate Palestine, paved the way for the affiliation of radical groups.
In 1969 Yasser Arafat, leader of Fatah, the largest of the parties affiliated to the PLO, became its chairman, replacing Yahaya Hamuda, who had taken over from Ahmad Shuqairi after the June 1967 war. Following the Arab-Israeli War of October 1973, the PNC adopted the idea of a Palestinian state in the Occupied Territories as a transient stage for the liberation of all mandate Palestine in June 1974. Later that year the Arab League recognized the PLO as the sole representative of the Palestinian people and granted it membership in the League."
-- Dilip Hiro The Essential Middle East / A Comprehensive Guide 2003
"In general, the current Palestinian situation is constantly changing and progressing towards the establishment of a state and the building of a Palestinian democracy. These changes will affect the PLO, but there is no doubt that, at least for some time, the PLO will continue its role as a very important Palestinian structure for the Palestinian people in the Occupied Territories, in the refugee camps, and throughout the world."
"Legitimate rights [of the Palestinians] do not include the right to establish another Arab state, especially as we know that such a state would eventually be established upon the ruins of the state of Israel."
-- Ze'ev B. Begin, PhD "The Likud Vision for Israel at Peace" Foreign Affairs 1991
"As the world watched in wonder, on Thursday, Sep. 9 [1993], Norwegian foreign minister Johan Joergan Holst carried a letter from [PLO Chairman] Arafat to [Israeli Prime Minister] Rabin recognizing Israel, renouncing violence, and pledging support for repeal of clauses objectionable to Israel in the PLO charter. Rabin, for his part, signed a letter recognizing the PLO as the representative of the Palestinian people and accepting the PLO as a negotiating partner. On Monday, Sep. 13, 1993, in a stunning event on the White House lawn in Washington, the Declaration of Principles on Interim Self-Government for the Palestinians was signed by [Israeli] Foreign Minister Peres and PLO representative Mahmoud Abbas, with Warren Christopher and Russian foreign minister Andrei Kosyrev adding their signatures as witnesses, while President Clinton, Arafat, and Rabin looked on."
"Oslo began with bright optimism on both sides for conciliation -- 65-75 percent of West Bank / Gaza Palestinians and Israeli Jews expressed support of the initial accord -- and ended in dejection, recriminations, and violence. The hopelessness that followed the breakdown of the talks at Camp David in July 2000, where American President Bill Clinton had assembled Barak and Arafat and their high-powered teams, and of several subsequent sets of talks in the moths after Camp David [Clinton Parameters & Taba Talks] stemmed from the inability to secure their signatures on the dotted line of a final status agreement...
Despite the cornerstones laid by the Oslo process for eventual Palestinian-Israeli coexistence and the normalization of Palestinian society -- the unveiling of the pro-compromise majorities on each side, mutual acceptance, the renunciation of violence as a permanent strategy, recognition by each side of the other's primal fear, the creation of multiple channels working toward coexistence, and the establishment of Palestinians' first-ever self-government -- the twenty-first century opened with a reversion to brutal violence, unmitigated hatred, and mutual demonization."
"Years of accumulated mistrust and loss of faith in the peace process, political circumstances in Israel and among the Palestinians, the history of prior agreements, perceptions of the United States' role, the relationship (or lack thereof) between Barak and Arafat, the mechanics of the negotiations -— all these contributed to a situation in which each side's actions were interpreted by the other in the most damaging way."
"The Israeli/American destruction of Oslo was only a matter of time. There was never any good faith on the part of the Israeli government and the United States government when it came to negotiating a just Middle East peace settlement with the Palestinians going all the way back to the preparatory work for the convocation of the 1991 Madrid Conference by the Bush Sr. administration. American bi-partisanship at work directed against Palestine and the Palestinians."
-- Francis A. Boyle, PhD "Obituary for the Oslo Accords R.I.P. Sep. 13, 1993 - Sep. 28, 2000" Counterpunch July 3, 2002
"The basic assumption that has been shared by the Americans, the Europeans and the Israeli center-left for years: that Oslo created a rational order in the Middle East based on give-and-take, which in the future would lead to an acceptable compromise... In retrospect, this turned out to be a mistaken assumption. It turned out that for Arafat it was a huge camouflage net behind which he fomented, and continues to foment, political pressure and terrorism in different dosages in order to undermine the very idea of two states for two nations."
"In 2000 turning his back on the Oslo process, Arafat rejected yet another historic compromise, that offered by Barak at Camp David in July and subsequently improved upon in President Bill Clinton's proposals (endorsed by Barak) in December. Instead, the Palestinians, in September, resorted to arms and launched the current mini-war or intifada."
-- Benny Morris "Peace? No Chance" Guardian Feb. 21, 2002
"The latest national [Israeli] myth is that of the generous offer that Ehud Barak is said to have made to Arafat at Camp David, only to be confronted with a flat rejection and a return to violence [Al-Aqsa Intifada]. There is a broad national consensus behind this myth, including the left and the peace camp, but popular support is not the same as evidence."
-- Avi Shlaim "A Betrayal of History" Guardian Feb. 22, 2002
X. Settlements
"Settlements are actually towns and villages where Jews have gone to live since the capture of the West Bank and Gaza Strip in 1967... Strategic concerns led both Labor and Likud governments to establish settlements. The objective is to secure a Jewish majority in key strategic regions of the West Bank, such as the Tel Aviv-Jerusalem corridor -- the scene of heavy fighting in several Arab-Israeli wars.
The Likud government also provided financial incentives for Jews to move to parts of Judea and Samaria [the West Bank] that did not necessarily have any strategic value. Their purpose was to solidify Israel's hold on territory that was part of biblical and historical Palestine / Israel... Many Jews also moved to areas such as Hebron because of their historical and religious significance to the Jewish people.
A third group of Jews who are today considered 'settlers' moved to the West Bank primarily for economic reasons; that is, the [Israeli] government provided financial incentives to live there, and the towns were close to their jobs."
-- Mitchell G. Bard, PhD The Complete Idiot's Guide to the Middle East Conflict, 2003
"Perhaps three-quarters of the Jews in the West Bank and Gaza could be considered economic settlers. Many of them moved to the West Bank for benefits unattainable inside the pre-1967 borders of Israel: space, tax breaks, and mountain air. They are reliable supporters of right-wing parties, but many of them are secular in their outlook.
The remainder of the settlers, fifty thousand or so, came to the territories for reasons of faith... Many of them are along Route 60, the main north-south highway that runs near the mountain spine of the West Bank. This is the heart of the land known in the Bible as Judaea and Samaria -- the part of ancient Israel most thickly crowded with sites that figure in Jewish history. It is also the part of the West Bank most densely populated by Arabs."
-- Jeffrey Goldberg "Among the Settlers" The New Yorker May 31, 2004
"All measures taken by Israel to change the physical character, demographic composition, institutional structure or status of the Palestinian and other Arab territories occupied since 1967, including Jerusalem, or any part thereof, have no legal validity and that Israel's policy and practices of settling parts of its population and new immigrants in those territories constitute a flagrant violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War and also constitute a serious obstruction to achieving a comprehensive, just and lasting peace in the Middle East."
"Israel possesses legal rights with respect to the West Bank and Gaza Strip that appear to be ignored by those international observers who repeat the term 'occupied territories' without any awareness of Israeli territorial claims. Even if Israel only seeks 'secure boundaries' that cover part of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, there is a world of difference between a situation in which Israel approaches the international community as a 'foreign occupier' with no territorial rights, and one in which Israel has strong historical rights to the land that were recognized by the main bodies serving as the source of international legitimacy in the previous century."
-- Dore Gold, PhD "From 'Occupied Territories' to 'Disputed Territories'" Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs Jan. 16, 2002
"The Israeli people also must understand that... the settlement enterprise and building bypass roads in the heart of what they already know will one day be part of a Palestinian state is inconsistent with the Oslo commitment that both sides negotiate a compromise."
-- Bill Clinton, JD "Farewell Address to the Middle East" Jan. 7, 2001
"Habitually described as a 'major obstacle to peace,' the settlement issue can be resolved by using a careful hand to redraw just 5 percent of the West Bank map — and by summoning the ample political will required to see the process through."
-- David Makovsky "The Five Percent Solution" Washington Institute for Near East Policy 2003
XI. Israeli Wall / Fence
click map to enlarge
"According to Israeli Ministry of Defense documents and field observation, the Barrier complex consists of the following main components: a fence with electronic sensors designed to alert Israeli military forces of infiltration attempts; a ditch (up to 4 meters deep); an asphalt two-lane patrol road; a trace road (a strip of sand smoothed to detect footprints) that runs parallel to the fence; and a stack of six coils of barbed wire marking the complex's perimeter. This complex has an average width of 50-70 meters, increasing to as much as 100 meters in some places...
Concrete walls cover about 8.5 kilometres of the approximately 180 kilometres of the Barrier completed or under construction. These parts of the Barrier, which the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) terms 'gunfire protection walls,' are generally found where Palestinian population centres abut Israel, such as the towns of Qalquliya and Tulkarm, and parts of Jerusalem."
-- United Nations "Report of the [U.N.] Secretary-General prepared pursuant to General Assembly resolution ES-10/13" Nov. 24, 2003
"Truth be told, those responsible for the fence are Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and the al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades. Their terror produced the impulse for the fence. If violence were not a threat, the fence would not be necessary."
-- Dennis Ross, PhD "When is a Fence not a Fence?" Wall Street Journal Aug. 4, 2003
"The Plan [Israeli wall / fence] stretches for the most part well within the occupied territory [the West Bank]. This wall is not primarily about the defense of Israel's territory."
-- Sir Arthur Watts, QC, LLM "Jordan Argues Israeli Barrier Is a Threat" Associated Press Feb. 24, 2004
XI. Israeli Wall / Fence
"The name of Jerusalem in Hebrew is Yerushalayim -- 'City of Peace.' In Arabic it is al-Quds, 'The Holy.' Since its first appearance in manuscripts as the Canaanite city-state in the Bronze Age nearly 4,000 years ago -- and all through a succession of conquerors and rulers from King David and King Solomon and the Kings of Judah through the Babylonians, Macedonians, Egyptians, Seleucids, Greeks, Jewish Hasmoneans, Romans, Byzantines, Persians, Umayyads, Abbasids, Fatimids, Ayyubids, Crusaders, Mameluks, Ottoman Turks, British, Jordanians, and now again the Jews -- Jerusalem has known no line between warfare and religion. It is a center of conflicting absolutes, of certainty, of righteousness. Its lofty refinement of intellect and theology has given enlightenment to its violence, mixing the wisdom of the ages into eternal bloodshed."
-- David K. Shipler Arab and Jew: Wounded Spirits in a Promised Land, 2002
"It is generally thought that Jerusalem is the most difficult problem that the peace-makers have to deal with. The centrality of the issue of Jerusalem derives...from emotional and religious sensitivities. The complexity of the issue is the result of three factors: [1.] the city is holy for adherents of Christianity, Islam and Judaism, namely, it is sacred for many millions of people; [2.] it is the subject of conflicting national claims of two peoples Israelis and Palestinian Arabs; and [3.] its population is very heterogeneous. A solution to the conflicts about Jerusalem is a sine qua non for the achievement of a viable and durable peace in the area."
-- Ruth Lapidoth Israel Law Review Spring-Summer 1994
Israeli position on Jerusalem
Palestinian position on Jerusalem
"The Israeli position [on Jerusalem] is based on its religious, historical and political claims to the holy city. Since King David established the city as the capital of the Jewish state circa 1000 BCE, it has served as the symbol and most profound expression of the Jewish people's identity as a nation."
"For centuries, Jerusalem has been the geographical, political, administrative and spiritual center of Palestine. It is, in all regards, the symbol of Palestinian nationality and identity."
