Middle East History 5 questions Research Proposal

Middle East History 5 questions - Research Proposal Example The Palestinian community has also recently been fractured by the Fatah/Hamas split, adding a new and potentially explosive dynamic to the Arab-Israeli conflict. Despite decades of attempts at resolving this conflict, the protagonists are at an impasse and without a resolution in sight. The Arab-Israeli conflict remains one of the most enduring and complex disputes of modern times. The origins of the dispute between Israelis and Palestinians are important today because two key issues between the warring parties remain largely unchanged since the late ninetieth century. For more than one hundred years these two fundamental issues have driven, contributed to, and exacerbated the protracted nature of this conflict. The first major issue is territorial and the question of land. At its very core, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is a conflict over land; a tiny sliver of land, semi arid and dry, bordering the Mediterranean Sea and roughly the size of New Jersey (Central Intelligence Agency 2008). The second major issue is the juxtaposition of Israeli and Palestinian identities; competing nationalisms which were at odds decades before the establishment of the modern state of Israel. It is these two core issues, disputed land and competing nationalisms, which are fundament al to the conflict and which must be tackled with vigor if one seeks to resolve the crisis. Any solution aimed at resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict must address the issues of land, competing nationalisms (a Palestinian state must be established), the status of Jerusalem must be resolved and Israel must be guaranteed an existence of peace and security. Only when each of these highly complex issues is addressed will we see a resolution to the Arab-Israeli conflict (Gelvin 2005). The origins of US involvement in the Middle East predate the Second World War and go as far back as the Paris Peace Accords and Treaty of Versailles in 1919, following the