“The Israel-Palestine Conflict”
What does it mean to understand or analyze the current unrest that is the Israel-Palenstine conflict? The Israel-Palenstine conflict has been going on for quite some time and even in 2023, in what could be seen as a new era of foreign policy, much could be debated about what this conflict will now be.
Writer Chris McGreal, in his 2023 article for The Guardian, “What are the roots of the Israel-Palestine conflict?”, writes, “the starting point for many people is the United Nations’ vote in 1947 to partition land in the British mandate of Palestine into two states – one Jewish, one Arab – following the destruction of much of European Jewry in the Holocaust….About 700,000 Palestinians were expelled or fled – about 85% of the Arab population of the territory captured by Israel – and were never allowed to return.
Palestinians called the exodus and eradication of much of their society inside Israel the Nakba, or “catastrophe”, and it remains the traumatic event at the heart of their modern history.”
The United States has not been a stranger to international conflicts and much to the polarizing dismay of its citizens, the role the United States plays in settling this ongoing conflict is yet to be determined. Recently, President Biden has called to stand in solidarity with Israel in its war against Hamas. His sentiments have been met with divided reactions.
According to a 2023 article for The New York Times, “Americans, Weary of Foreign Conflicts, Face Another”, several US citizens have “expressed trepidation as they considered the widening conflicts in the Middle East and Europe. Some questioned how deeply the country should be involved…their thoughts — a snapshot in time — reflect the polls but also this nation’s own considerable fractures after nearly a decade of partisan rage, pandemic grief and the open hostility of the Trump years.”
According to experiences in history, the United States involvement in wars across the globe has left an indelible impact on generations that lived through it. The mere notion of terrorism has become a controversial topic since the turn of the century. Now, twenty-three years in, perhaps the American people are not only desensitized from ongoing strife but are rather exhausted from other wars.
Wars have a peculiar position in the greater context of politics and economy. On one end, war generates profit through international trade but on the other, at the cost of the physical and mental well being of its people, it breeds irreversible consequences, begging the question of worth.
