Disputed territory between Palestine and Israel. Why is Israel now at war with the failed state of Palestine? War and its aftermath

Introduction

The Arab-Israeli conflict has been going on for more than half a century. The beginning of this conflict was associated with the creation in 1948 of the State of Israel in Palestine. However, the process associated with the creation of this state began even earlier, at the end of 18 -century and were associated with the so-called political Zionism. This caused a negative reaction from the Arab population of Palestine and neighboring countries, since the British administration promised the Arabs to create an Arab state on the territory of Palestine. Disagreements led to a war in which the State of Israel not only managed to survive, but also captured a significant part of the territory intended for the Arab state. This was followed by several more conflicts between Israel and neighboring Arab states. The greatest influence on subsequent events was the 1967 war, also known as the "Six-Day War", during which Israel captured the eastern part of Jerusalem, the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, Sinai and the Golan Heights. In addition to complicating relations with neighboring Arab countries, the Israeli occupation of these territories led to the flight of Palestinians to neighboring countries, exacerbating the problem of Palestinian refugees. Up until 1990 -In the 1990s, Palestinian-Israeli relations practically did not develop, since the Palestinians refused to recognize Israel's right to exist, while Israel perceived the Palestinians as terrorists and refused to discuss the creation of a Palestinian state and the issue of refugees. The turning point came at the end of 1980 -x early 1990 -1990s, with the collapse of the USSR. The United States has become the main center of power in the world and the American administration has taken a number of steps aimed at resolving the Middle East conflict.

The issue of the Arab-Israeli settlement is still one of the most topical issues world politics. Recent clashes between the IDF and members of the Hamas movement in 2012 show that the parties need to work out as soon as possible solutions that can lead to a final peaceful settlement of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, which would allow the parties to provide each other with guarantees of peaceful coexistence. The search for this solution was started by the Israeli side immediately after the end of the Six-Day War, when a number of Mossad officers spoke in favor of separating the territories of the East Bank and the Gaza Strip from the state of Israel, and creating a Palestinian state in these territories. But then the Israeli leadership underestimated the danger posed by the Palestinian-Israeli conflict for Israel, and considered that it would be more profitable to leave these territories to ensure Israel's security. Subsequent terrorist attacks by the Palestinian liberation fighters finally spoiled relations between the Palestinians and Israelis, which led to a freeze on work on finding a compromise. At the moment, it is inappropriate to talk about who is to blame for the current situation, since the problem of the Palestinian-Israeli settlement has not yet been resolved and it must be solved based on the current state of Palestinian-Israeli relations.

You should also remember the importance of this region for the world, because in addition to cultural and religious value, we are talking about a region with a population of about 12 million people. Of course, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is not the only problem in the region of the Middle East, since apart from it there are problems of countering Islamic extremism, Iran's nuclear program or the issue of the Syrian settlement, which includes the issue of the country's chemical weapons stockpiles. However, a peaceful resolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict can significantly defuse the situation in the region, since many regional contradictions are tied to this conflict.

The speedy resolution of this problem is extremely important for Israel, since it is the resolution of the Palestinian problem that will become one of the main guarantors of the security of the state. It is also disturbing that many Palestinian groups are gradually coming under Iranian control. This is evident from recent events, during which Iranian-made missiles were used against Israel, which indicates a rapprochement between the Palestinian radical movements and the Iranian government. For Israel, this problem is especially relevant, since Palestinian groups loyal to Iran can play the role of a “fifth column” in a possible confrontation between Israel and Iran.

The degree of development of the topic: The theoretical and methodological basis of the work was the research of many scientists. The Palestinian-Israeli conflict is the object of close attention of a number of domestic and foreign researchers. The interest of scientists in this conflict is primarily due to the importance of this topic for regional and global development.

One of the most prominent Russian-speaking researchers of the Arab-Israeli and Palestinian-Israeli conflict is A. Epstein is a specialist in the study of history and sociology, one of the largest Russian-speaking experts in the field of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Many of his monographs are actively used in the work, which help to reveal the Israeli point of view on the settlement process.

Another valuable source of information regarding the internal processes that took place in Israel was the book of I.D. Zvyagelskaya "The State of Israel", which is valuable primarily because the author highlights the internal political picture of Israel, and also describes the consequences of certain decisions for the Israeli government and gives an insight into the history of the State of Israel and the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict.

The work of the authors Polyakov K.I. and Khasyanov A.Zh. "Palestinian national autonomy: the experience of state building" is devoted to the period of formation of government in the Palestinian national autonomy.

Speaking of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, one cannot fail to mention E.M. Primakov - a man who not only studied the Middle East, but also took a direct part in key events in this region. His book The Middle East: On Stage and Behind the Scenes provides information on the role of Soviet politics. / Russia in the region.

The book of the Palestinian explorer A. Rashed's "Palestinian Problem: Past and Present" tells the history of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict from a Palestinian perspective.

Foreign literature was also involved in the thesis work, since foreign sources help to obtain the most complete information about the role of the United States and Europe in the Palestinian-Israeli settlement.

W. Quandt's book "Peace process: american diplomacy and the arab-israeli conflict since 1967" is a valuable source of information about the role of the American side in the Arab-Israeli settlement process.

Another source of information about the role of Americans in the settlement of the Middle East conflict is the book by S. Tucker ,"The encyclopedia of the Arab - Israeli conflict: A Political, Social, and Military History" ,in which the author gives information about all aspects of the Arab-Israeli confrontation.

The object of the research is the ethno-political conflict relations of the Arab-Israeli conflict, which appear in the historical development and the current state as a complex and specific phenomenon of regional and world politics.

The subject of the study is the institutional aspect of the Arab-Israeli conflict as an essential factor in its historical and current nature, which determines the specifics of the current state and the contradictions of its development.

The purpose of the study is determined by the chosen object and subject of the study and is to identify and comprehensively analyze the Arab-Israeli conflict, its regulating factors in the modern world.

Achieving the main goal of the study involves solving a number of specific tasks:

analyze the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict, share the main conflict factors and problems of Arab-Israeli relations;

identify the main structural elements of the Arab-Israeli conflict in their hierarchical unity;

identify milestones historical process Arab-Israeli conflict;

determine the potential and conditions for the implementation of the regulatory functions of the Arab-Israeli conflict

The basis for the study are:

1.Materials from the official websites of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the State of Israel and the Palestinian Information Center and the archive site www.palestineinarabic.com, which posted official documents covering the course of negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian National Authority.

.Transcripts of speeches of the parties in the negotiations, which help to understand the positions of the parties in the negotiations.

.Autobiographical materials written by the participants of these negotiations, and persons who had a great influence on the course of the Palestinian-Israeli settlement, which provide information on the participation of these figures in the negotiation process and give their assessment of the progress of the peace process between Israel and Palestine.

.Articles from domestic and foreign newspapers covering the development of the Middle East settlement process.

.Collections of UN documents, as well as documents from the official websites of the UN archives, which contain decisions regarding the Arab-Israeli and Palestinian-Israeli settlement. These documents give an idea of ​​the role of the UN in the Palestinian-Israeli settlement process.

1. Historical roots of the emergence and development of the Arab-Israeli conflict

.1 Chronology of events and the political aspect of the formation of the State of Israel and the Palestinian Authority

conflict arabic israeli historical

Palestine is a territory located in the Middle East off the coast of the Mediterranean Sea, which has a centuries-old complex history.

Since ancient times, the lands of the Eastern Mediterranean, connecting Eurasia with Africa, have been the most important center of human habitation due to the favorable climate and advantageous geostrategic position. It was this part of Asia that, after the emergence of the most ancient centers of civilization, became the center of transit links between them and played a huge role in the mutual influence of cultures - ancient Egyptian, Mesopotamian, ancient Greek, not to mention the Hittites, Assyrians and other representatives of secondary civilizations and states of the Middle East region. The Mediterranean lands were an arena of transit trade routes, which contributed to their accelerated development, the formation of large state complexes on their basis. Cities showed a tendency to strengthen and expand due to the periphery adjacent to them, the conquest and annexation of neighboring lands.

At the end of the II millennium BC. the Philistines came to the southwestern part of Canaan, moving from Asia Minor. The place of their settlement, the most fertile lands of the Mediterranean, was called Peleshet, and later the whole land of Canaan was called Palestine. Almost simultaneously with the Philistines, in 1800 BC, the ancient Jews appeared on the territory of Palestine, who were Western Semitic pastoral tribes ousted from Mesopotamia. On the eve of the resettlement of Jews in Palestine, it was a conglomeration of small cities and proto-states, actively at enmity with each other. And after the appearance of the Jews in the Palestinian lands, the Philistines began a fierce struggle against them. All this greatly complicated the situation in the Eastern Mediterranean. And in 1600 BC. Jews move to Egypt.

Returning to Palestine at the turn of the XIII-XII centuries. BC, the Jews, in a long struggle with the local population, won the best part of it for themselves, fortified there and turned ancient Jerusalem into their political and religious center, forming a tribal union, called Israel. Having become sedentary farmers, the Jews gradually assimilated a significant part of the ancient population. At the same time, wars with city-states of other inhabitants of Palestine were an important part of their activities, during which the first kings of Israel stood out and strengthened: Saul, David, Solomon. Later, during the struggle with the Philistines, in 995. BC. the Kingdom of Israel was formed, which occupied a significant part of the Palestinian territories, and subsequently broke up into two separate kingdoms - Israel in the north of Palestine and Judah with a center in Jerusalem in the south (928 BC).

The contradictions between Arabs and Jews, which led to direct clashes between the parties, noticeably escalated at the end of the 19th century, when the Jews began to exercise their rights to Palestine in the form of Zionism - a religious and political movement for the revival of the Jewish people in their historical homeland.

In March 1897 Jews "of the whole world" were invited to send delegates to the Zionist Congress in Munich. Western European Jews were strongly opposed to this idea. Protests were sent first from the rabbis of Germany, and then from the Munich Jews, so that the congress had to be moved to the Swiss city of Basel. 197 delegates arrived at the first international congress of the Zionists, most of them from Eastern Europe. So the World Zionist Organization (WZO) was founded, which proclaimed the Jews a separate nation, setting itself the goal of achieving for it a "socially recognized and legally guaranteed home."

The State of Israel appeared on political map peace in May 1948, but the preparatory work for the creation of Jewish statehood was carried out long before that. For many centuries, Jews scattered throughout the world have been characterized by a desire to return to the "promised land", where their state once was. This movement was religious and political in nature. At the end of XIX - beginning of XX century. in accordance with the program of the first Congress of the World Zionist Organization (WZO), convened in 1897 in Palestine, the first Jewish settlements were created. Zionism (return to Zion), an ancient movement: for the revival of the Jewish people in their historical homeland, ”at this time acquired the character of a politically organized movement. At the same time, the first Zionist political parties appeared in Palestine, which served as the basis for the formation of the future multi-party system of Israel.

In 1920, British colonial administration was established in Palestine, which opened up wide opportunities for Zionist penetration into the country and the development of the socio-economic structure of the future state. By the end of World War II, over 80% of all Palestinian industry was in the Jewish sector.

However, the desire of the Jewish community for national and state sovereignty ran into stubborn resistance from the Palestinian Arabs. The Arabs, led by their religious leaders, categorically refused to discuss the very possibility of dividing Palestine. Already 30s. were marked by violent political confrontations and armed conflicts between Jewish and Arab communities. In the post-war period, especially in 1947, they developed into a real war that engulfed most of the country. In such an environment, the British ruler The government was forced to refer the question of the future status of Palestine us for consideration by the UN.

On November 1947, the UN General Assembly by a majority vote (with the rarest mutual consent of the USSR and the USA) voted for the abolition of the British mandate regime in Palestine in May 1948 and the creation of two independent states on its territory - Arab and Jewish. At the same time, a representative body of the Jewish population, the People's Council, was created. Exactly at the hour of the expiration of British control in Palestine on the night of May 14-15, 1948, the People's Council held its meeting, at which one of the leading political leaders, D. Ben-Gurion, read out the Declaration of Independence, proclaiming the creation of the State of Israel.

Immediately after the proclamation of the state of Israel, armies in neighboring Arab countries invaded its territory. The first Arab-Israeli war began. In it, Israel, relying on US assistance, managed not only to repel the offensive of the Arab forces, but also to annex 6.7 thousand square meters to its territory. km allocated by the UN for the Arab state, as well as the Western part of Jera salim. Jordan occupied the eastern part of the city and the western bank of the Jordan River, Egypt - the Gaza Strip. About 900 thousand Palestinian Arabs were forced to leave their areas of residence, for seized by the Israelis, and go into the position of refugees in neighboring Arab countries. Thus, along with the birth of the State of Israel, one of the most painful problems of our time arose - the Palestinian problem.

After the end of the first Arab-Israeli conflict, the foundations of statehood were formed. Almost all the officials of the interim government, nominated earlier by the People's Assembly, received ministerial portfolios in the first government of Israel. The People's Assembly moved to the position of the Israeli parliament - the Knesset. Thus, there is an obvious continuity between the legislative and executive bodies of the former community and the new state.

Palestinian War 1948-1949 and its consequences. Immediately after the proclamation of the State of Israel on May 14, 1948, the territory of Pa Lestini entered the troops of Transjordan, Iraq, Egypt, Syria and Lebanon. Saudi Arabia and Yemen also declared war on Israel. The Arab states intended to stop the territorial expansion of the Zionists and prevent the implementation of UN General Assembly Resolution No. 181 (II) of November 29, 1947 (on the division of Palestine). A significant role in inspiring the conflict was played by the policy of England and the United States, which sought to preserve, and the second, to establish control over the strategically important region of the Middle East.

In the initial period, hostilities developed in favor of the Arab armies. By the end of May-beginning of June, the Arab Legion of Transjordan and Iraqi troops occupied a significant part of Eastern Palestine, including the Arab sector of Jerusalem; one detachment from the Egyptian expeditionary force advanced to Isdud (Ashdod), located about 30 km south of Tel Aviv, and the other through Birsheba (Beersheba) reached the southern approaches to Jerusalem. On June 11, a truce was reached through the mediation of the United Nations. Israel used it for organizational and military-technical strengthening of its forces. Despite the efforts of the UN mediator in Palestine F. Bernadotte, on July 8 hostilities resumed. In the period leading up to the second ceasefire on 18 July, Israeli forces occupied almost all of northern Palestine.

As the conflict continued, the position of the Arab side was increasingly complicated by the influence of such factors as contradictions in the Arab camp and the treacherous policy of the monarchical regimes of Transjordan and Egypt, which prevented the coordination of military efforts, as well as the superiority of the Israeli army in organization and weapons.

In response to the British-supported maneuvers of the King of Transjordan Abdullah, aimed at keeping the eastern part of Palestine occupied by the Arab Legion as part of the kingdom, the creation of a Palestinian government headed by Ahmed Hilmi was proclaimed in September 1948 in Egyptian-controlled Gaza. He was recognized by all members of the League of Arab States, except for Transjordan. The latter inspired the convocation in Jericho of the national Palestinian congress, which proclaimed on December 1, 1948 Abdullah ko the role of Palestine.

In mid-October 1948, Israeli troops resumed their offensive, concentrating their main efforts in the southern direction. By the end of December, they managed to encircle part of the Egyptian troops near the city of Fallujah, push the main Egyptian forces back to the Gaza region and, developing an offensive in the Negev, enter Egyptian territory. In the north, the Israelis invaded Lebanon. On January 7, 1949, hostilities in Palestine ceased.

In February-July 1949, with the mediation of the UN on the island of Rho dos were signed temporary armistice agreements between Israel Lem, on the one hand, and Egypt, Lebanon, Transjordan and Syria, on the other. The system of truces was to be in place until the "final political agreement" to establish peace in Palestine. In April 1949, the UN Conciliation Commission on Palestine convened a conference of representatives of the Arab countries and Israel in Lausanne in order to settle disputed issues. The readiness expressed by the Israeli side in May 1949 to sign the Lausanne Protocol, which defined the resolutions of the UN General Assembly on Palestine as the basis for further discussions, was explained by the fact that it was at that time that the issue of Israel's admission to the UN was being decided. All subsequent attempts by the Conciliation Commission to achieve a shift in the Palestinian problem of the problem failed, primarily due to the failure of rail to cede the territories seized during the war and to allow re patriation of refugees. The system of Rhodes agreements, therefore, was not supported by further steps towards the conclusion of peace.

At that time, the Palestinian question included the following aspects: the territorial question, the question of the status of Jerusalem and the problem of Palestinian refugees. Most of the territory allotted for the Arab state in accordance with the UN resolution on the partition of Palestine (about 6.7 thousand square kilometers out of 11.1 thousand square kilometers) was captured by Israel. The remaining Palestinian lands, in accordance with the armistice agreements, were to come under the control of the Arab League. In July 1951, King Abdullah, accused of secret negotiations with Israel about Palestinian cause, was killed in Jerusalem by a member of the Palestinian terrorist organization Al-Jihad al-Muqaddas (Holy War).

Israel, not limited to the occupation of the western (new) part of Jerusalem during military operations, in January 1950, in violation of UN Resolution No. 181 (II), which provided for the granting of international status to the city, declared Jerusalem its capital and transferred the Knesset and most government institutions to it .

The most acute and dramatic side of the Palestinian problem was the situation of refugees.

According to the UN data for June 1950, the refugee 960 thousand out of 1350 thousand Palestinian Arabs became mi. Most of them ended up in the Palestinian territories adjacent to Israel: 425 thousand - on the West Bank of the river. Jordan and 225 thousand - in the Gaza Strip, and the rest immediately moved to the Arab countries, including 130 thousand to Lebanon, 85 thousand to Syria, more than 80 thousand to the East Bank of the Jordan.

The situation of the bulk of the refugees was extremely difficult: having abandoned their homes, land and property, they were left homeless and without any means of subsistence. The economy of the Arab countries that provided refugee asylum, primarily Jordan, which accepted the largest number of them, was not able to provide hundreds of thousands of destitute people with even the most necessary necessities. At the first stage, assistance was provided to them through the International Committee of the Red Cross, the League of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, the World Health Organization (WHO), the Food and Agriculture Organization of the PLO (FAO) and a number of other international organizations, as well as established in November 1948. United Nations Special Fund for Palestine Refugees. Since 1950, the UN Near East Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) took care of them. UNRWA (25 camps in Jordan, 15 in Lebanon, 8 in the Gaza Strip and 6 in Syria).

With limited financial resources, UNRWA could not fully cope with the tasks of employment, social and material security for refugees. Suffice it to say that in the early 1960s, the cost of food rations issued per inhabitant of the Palestinian camp did not exceed 7 cents a day, and UNRWA was able to provide housing for only 39.1% of the refugees. By lawsuits by residents of other livelihood camps often proved inconclusive. Over the years, the number of Palestinian exiles has increased. As a result of natural growth (an average of 3.2% per year) and the influx of new refugees from Israeli-controlled territories by June 1967, 1345 thousand people.

The Palestinian-Israeli conflict is a clash of two territorial entities, ethnic communities for the right to create their own monocultural country and its universal recognition. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, two conflicting national movements arose to lay claim to Eretz Israel/Palestine. One of them was Zionism. It arose out of long-standing Jewish religious and historical aspirations, as well as in response to European anti-Semitism, and developed under the influence of national movements that existed in Europe. The Zionists called on Jews to immigrate to Eretz Israel in order to restore the Jewish national home two thousand years after the destruction of the Second Temple and the expulsion of the Jews by the Romans. The second movement was Arab nationalism, which also arose from European nationalism and was initiated in Beirut and Damascus by Christian Arabs. Arab nationalism initially opposed the Ottoman Empire and then (after World War I) English and French colonialism. But in Palestine, where the Arab presence lasted some 1,400 years, Arab nationalism immediately clashed with the Zionist movement. Two peoples claimed the same land. The Palestinians demand "restoration of historical justice" and the return of millions of people, whom they call refugees, to the lands where their ancestors lived before the first Arab-Israeli war of 1947-1949. The overwhelming majority of Israelis are convinced that such a development will turn Israel into a binational Jewish-Arab state, and, given the high birth rate in the Arab sector, into a predominantly Arab state, in which life for the Jewish minority will be virtually impossible. At the same time, the degree of responsibility of the parties for the tragic events that occurred in 1947-1949 remains a subject of discussion.

Taking into account the contradictions that have arisen historically, three forms of relations between the parties to the conflict can be distinguished: a strong peace, an open large-scale war, an intermediate state characterized by outbreaks of struggle and short-term attempts to bring the warring parties closer to resolve differences.

An open large-scale war involving a significant number of forces from both sides, aimed at the final resolution of contradictions, is a theoretically possible phenomenon, but in practice such an outcome of events seems unlikely. Firstly, because in addition to the direct participants, other countries are also involved in the sphere of confrontation, both occupying the border area and located at a considerable distance from it. In the latter case, we are talking primarily about the United States and Russia. The former are interested in the existence of a strong independent Israel, which develops cooperation with Turkey and restrains the influence of Iran. For Russia, it is necessary to interrupt the confrontational tendencies in order to prevent the Arab world from turning into a power pole. Otherwise, Iran will be forced to curtail its activities in the north, which will ultimately lead to a highly undesirable clash of interests between Turkey and Russia.

Secondly, at present, for an open large-scale action against Israel, the Palestinian Authority does not have a sufficient degree of consolidation of forces. Thirdly, the very goal of a final resolution of contradictions looks unattainable.

The second theoretically possible option for resolving the conflict is the creation of a strong peace, and here it would be appropriate to turn to the history of Palestinian-Israeli relations.

In 1947, a UN commission proposed a plan for the partition of Palestine, accepted by the Jewish community, but rejected by the Palestinian Arabs. Over and over again, the terms of the proposed peace agreement became less favorable for the Arabs: in 1937 they were asked to create a state on more than 80% of the territory of Palestine, in 1947 - by 45%, in 2000 (at the negotiations at Camp David and in Taba) - by about 21-22%. Palestinian leaders have consistently rejected all these proposals, with the result that a Palestinian Arab state has not yet been created. The unwillingness of the political elite of the Arabs to compromise in any form, the rigid position "all - or nothing" leaves no chance for a peaceful settlement of the conflict.

For the Israelis, it was a war of independence. Israel - the only country ever created by the decision of the United Nations - saw itself as the rightful successor to the rights of the Jewish people to self-determination in their historical homeland. For the Palestinians, the 1948 war was a disaster. The Arab world considered Israel an artificial entity founded by foreign invaders who stole the Holy Arab Land.

All of the above circumstances convincingly indicate that there can be no question of any kind of strong peace between the Palestinian and Israeli people. In such situations, the conclusion of peace for a long time is achieved either by the complete exhaustion of the forces of both sides, which, with the modern international one, incl. the financial support of both countries seems unlikely, or the destruction of one of the participants in the conflict, which again is impossible in the foreseeable future for a number of reasons. And this makes us turn to the third potentially possible and already existing version of the state of relations between the two sides - an intermediate stage between peace and war.

.2 Emergence of the Arab-Israeli conflict: causes and dynamics of its development

At the beginning of 1948, the Arabs made up more than two-thirds of the population of Mandatory Palestine, and most of the Palestinian lands were in their private ownership. The demographic situation changed dramatically in less than a year as a result of the mass migration of the Arab population during the first Arab-Israeli war. One of its consequences has been the problem of Palestinian refugees, divided, living in neighboring states and deprived of a significant part of their property.

Palestinian Arabs are not the only forced migrants as a result of the redivision of the world in the 20th century, but their problem is unique. Making up only two percent of the total number of refugees moving around the world after the Second World War, they still have not changed their status. The Arabs of Palestine became the only community whose fate was controlled by the international community, delaying the solution of their problem for many decades.

In all other cases, the governments of the states in which they sought asylum helped the refugees, the solution was either in the return of refugees to their historical homeland, or in integration into the communities of those countries in which they found themselves as a result of forced resettlement. This happened to the 8.5 million Indians and Sikhs who came to India from Pakistan; 6.5 million Muslims who went to Pakistan from India; 13 million Germans who moved from Eastern European countries to Germany; thousands of Bulgarian Turks and many other refugees, totaling 4 million.

The Palestinian paradox is all the more surprising, since the Palestinian Arabs had similarities in language, religion, level of social development and, in part, national identity with the peoples of most states in which they arrived. However, the only country that agreed to ensure the naturalization of the Palestinian refugees was Jordan. The rest of the Arab countries continued to keep the Palestinians in a powerless position in refugee camps for decades.

The UN, which failed to prevent the first Arab-Israeli war, faced a large-scale humanitarian and social problem after it ended. Hopes for a quick settlement soon dissipated, the problem of Palestinian refugees was on the agenda every year with all its urgency, but the search for its true solution continues to this day. UN representatives often acted as mediators between unwilling parties, who shifted responsibility for what had happened to each other and slipped into positions of mutual accusations. Some of the most pressing questions were who is to blame for the expulsion of the Palestinians, why the Palestinians left their homes and who is responsible for this.

There were also disputes about the historical rights of the Jewish or Arab people to Palestine. Thus, according to the Arab leaders, until the end of the First World War, its territory was an inseparable part of the surrounding Arab world. Israeli representatives, in turn, argued that it never happened that Jews did not live in Palestine, which was never ruled by Arabs.

The "Palestinian nationality" of the Arab refugees has also been the subject of debate. The demands of the refugees (or the Arab leaders representing them) were based on the fact that they were Palestinians. Consequently, their goal was to return to their homeland, i.e. to Palestine, usually referring to their homes in Israel. Israel's representatives responded by arguing that an Arab refugee from Israeli Palestine has practically "returned to his homeland" if he is in Arab Palestine (not part of Israel).

A very problematic question was how many "real" refugees from that part of Palestine, which was intended to create a Jewish state. For example, UNRWA (the UN Refugee Agency, set up at the initiative of the UN to assist refugees), Israel and the Arab states gave conflicting figures reflecting the number of refugees in 1948. The amount of compensation depended on these data. Israel officially declares that in 1948 520,000 people left its territory. UNRWA has registered 726,000 refugees, and according to Palestinian representatives, this figure reaches 900,000. These data have been questioned by independent researchers. According to the census conducted by the British in December 1944, a total of 525,500 Arabs lived in that part of Palestine on which the State of Israel was created, of which 170,430 people lived in cities, and 355,070 people lived in rural areas. Considering the fact that approximately 150 thousand people remained in Israel, and 35 thousand returned in 1949-1956, the total number of refugees of all ages (directly refugees, not counting their children born later) is just over 340 thousand people. The right of refugees to return was the most sensitive issue raised in the discussions. On November 19, 1948, at the third UN General Assembly, Resolution No. 212 was adopted, paragraph 11 of which contained the basic principles reflecting the UN's attitude to the issue of Palestine refugees. The resolution stated that "refugees who wish to return to their homes and live in peace with their neighbors" should be given the opportunity to carry out their intentions as soon as possible, and those who choose not to return will be compensated for abandoned property and compensated for damages " in accordance with the principles of international law”, for which the governments of the states affected by the problem will be responsible.

The interpretation of the eleventh paragraph became a constant stumbling block between the parties. The resolution spoke of refugees wishing to "live in peace with their neighbors", thus the return was directly linked to the establishment of peace. The phrase "refugees must be allowed to return as soon as possible" meant that only the sovereign State of Israel could authorize and determine the timeframe for return.

The Arabs could not accept such a condition. So, on October 14, 1955, Egyptian Prime Minister Nasser, in his interview to an American newspaper, said that "the hatred of the Arabs is very strong and there is no point in talking about peace with Israel." Arab leaders demanded for the refugees an absolute right to return to their abandoned homes or the right to choose between return and compensation. In his polemic with the Arab leaders, A. Even, Israel's Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to the UN (and later Minister of Foreign Affairs), put forward the following arguments against the idea of ​​the return (repatriation) of Palestinian refugees to Israel. First, he emphasized that the very term "repatriation" (from the Latin "patria" - homeland) is used incorrectly in this regard, since the arrival of Arab refugees from Arab lands to non-Arab lands is not a return to their homeland. He said: “Patria is not just a geographical concept. The resettlement of refugees in Israel will not be repatriation, but alienation from Arab society; only the process of uniting with people who share national feelings, cultural heritage and linguistic identity would be a real repatriation of the Arab refugee.”

The Arab countries treated the Palestinians not as people and representatives of their people, but only as a weapon with which to strike at Israel. This position was shared by Ralph Galloway, representative of the United Nations Refugee Agency in Jordan, who stated: “It is clear that the Arab states do not want to solve the problem of refugees. They seek to keep it as an open wound, as a challenge to the UN and a weapon against Israel. Arab leaders don't care if the Palestinians live or die."

As a result of the Six-Day War, Israeli control was established over all of the former Mandatory Palestine, over territories that were home to a significant number of refugees from the War of Independence. These included Judea and Samaria, occupied by Jordan in 1948, and the Gaza Strip, which was under Egyptian control. The Six Day War and its consequences have given the refugee problem a new dimension and created new problems.

After the Six Day War, a large number of Palestinians ended up in the territories controlled by Israel. This fact forced the Israeli administration to prove in practice the effectiveness of the measures to solve the problem, which it proposed to apply earlier. The policy of the Israeli leadership towards Arab refugees living in controlled territories was quite successful, while their situation improved significantly compared to the situation of Palestinians living in Arab countries, moreover, the number of their conflicts with the local administration was much less than with leadership of the Arab countries.

After 1967, more and more people began to talk not about Palestinian refugees, but about the Palestinian people, moving from demands for their return to Israel to demands for the creation of a Palestinian state.

The problem of refugees was discussed not only in the UN, but also in the framework of multilateral negotiations mediated by the United States between representatives of Israel and the Arab states, and subsequently the Palestinians themselves. Thus, the issue of refugee status was raised at international conferences: in 1949 in Lausanne, in 1950 in Geneva, in 1951 in Paris. Discussion of the issue resumed twenty years later - in December 1973 at a conference in Geneva after the Yom Kippur War, during the Israeli-Egyptian negotiations in September 1978 and at the Madrid Conference in October-November 1991. If the first three conferences were aimed at Since some progress has been made in resolving the issue of refugees, the mention of this topic at the conferences and negotiations of the 1970s and 1990s had a predominantly formal meaning, and neither side seriously counted on a change in the status quo. The turning point came during the negotiations at Camp David in July 2000 and at Taba in January 2001, when the government of Ehud Barak expressed its readiness to make unprecedented concessions on the Israeli side on the right of return of Palestinian refugees and their descendants. It is significant that the Arab representatives rejected all Israeli proposals on this issue - both half a century ago and in recent negotiations.

It is generally accepted that the Camp David conference failed because of the lack of agreement on the division of Jerusalem, but in fact the parties have made some progress over Jerusalem. In his article "The Problem of Refugees at Peace Conferences, 1949-2000" Shelley Freed argues that focusing on the Jerusalem issue was necessary "to avoid the conclusion that they cannot make progress on the refugee problem."

After the failure at Camp David, an additional conference between the two sides, without US mediation, was held in Taba in January 2001. The main topic discussed at this meeting was the declared "right of return" by the Palestinians. The work of the subcommittee, headed by Yossi Beilin, representing Israel, and Nabil Shaat from the Palestinians, however, also did not lead to the signing of an agreement.

The Taba talks made some progress on the future of the refugees. The Palestinians have shown a certain flexibility in solving the problem, which could open the horizon for serious negotiations that would not be influenced by the electoral interests of representatives of both sides. According to various reports, language was found in Taba that allowed the Palestinians not to waive their right to return, along with an agreement that in practice the solution would be to resettle the refugees outside of Israel. However, the general failure of the Taba talks prevented this plan from being tested.

Palestinian refugees are a unique political and social phenomenon. The problem has long gone beyond the settlement and resettlement of people deprived of their homes during hostilities, and affects a large ethnic community, whose members are descendants of refugees, an entire people without a state.

The main obstacle to the settlement of the conflict was the so-called "right of refugees to return". If initially it was about a "million" Palestinians, then over the past fifty years their number has increased significantly. It is obvious that now it is impossible to "return" to the territory of Israel 4 million people, who, moreover, have no historical memory of him. For the third generation of refugees born in the camps of Gaza and the East Bank, Israel is not their homeland. Israel alone can no longer cope with this problem, and the world community is now faced with the question of the status of an entire nation.

For specialists dealing with the problems of the Middle East, it is no secret that water, and not just oil, is one of the hidden driving forces endless conflicts in the region. It is the distribution of water, and not land, that can be called one of the most likely causes of the next war. By 2025, approximately 2/3 of the world's population - about 5.5 billion people - is expected to live in areas facing water scarcity.

The leaders of the Middle Eastern countries unanimously recognize that the problem of water supply, in terms of its impact on the current and future development of the region, is becoming a priority and is becoming more important than oil in a number of respects. According to experts, by 2030 only 5 out of 19 countries in the region will be able to meet their water needs. In the light of the unresolved Arab-Israeli conflict, the issue of the distribution of water resources is becoming one of the key issues.

Speaking of water resources, we should not forget about one of the most important factors influencing the dynamics of their supply and demand, namely, population growth. It should be noted that the issue of water supply occupied one of the main places in the strategic plans of the Zionist movement almost from the very beginning of its inception. Back in 1919, one of the leaders of Zionism, Chaim Weizmann, wrote in a letter to the British Prime Minister Lloyd George: “The supply of water to Palestine should come from the slopes of Mount Hermon, from the upper reaches of the river. Jordan and the Litani River in Lebanon…” In the same 1919, in a message to the English Laborites, D. Ben-Gurion emphasized: “It is required that the water sources on which the country’s future is based should not be outside the boundaries of the Jewish national home. We insist that Eretz Israel includes the southern bank of the Litani and the Hauran region. The country is in dire need of the main rivers of this land - the Yarmuk, the Litani and the Jordan." From the above statements it is clear that the issue of water resources concerned not only the economic future of the state, but also seemed to be one of the aspects of national security.

A detailed study of the problem of water resources from the perspective of the Middle East conflict gives grounds to assert that the policy of the Israeli government during the Arab-Israeli wars was aimed at obtaining access to water, which the Arab states had previously had. Thus, as a result of the war of 1948, the "six-day war" of 1967, the October war of 1973 and the Israeli aggression against Lebanon in 1982, Israel gained control over a significant part of the water resources of the Jordan River, as well as over its underground and groundwater . It should be noted that in the occupied territory, all water resources were taken under the full state control of the Israeli authorities and began to be considered as objects of state property. As a result, the consumption of water by the Arab population has been drastically reduced. In addition, the water prices set by the Israeli authorities have quadrupled. On the Syrian-Israeli direction, the Golan Heights are the main strategic object. From the main height of the Golan, Mount Hermon originate the main northern tributaries of the river. Jordan: rivers Banias, Dan and Hasbani. Although the Golan area makes up only 1% of Syria, they account for 14% of controlled Syrian water supplies. As a result of the occupation by Israel in 1967 of part of the Golan Heights, the situation with water use has changed dramatically. The active settlement policy launched by the Israeli authorities led to the emergence of Israeli settlements in the Golan, the inhabitants of which had to be provided with access to water. As a result, from the first days of the occupation, Israel established tight control over the distribution of water. For the Arab inhabitants of the Golan, a ban was imposed on planting various types of fruit trees, they were forced to destroy a significant number of reservoirs (of the 400 that existed previously, only 3-4 have survived today), they were almost completely cut off from the largest natural reservoir, the Golan Lake. Ram. The lack of water has left the Arab population of the Golan Heights facing serious irrigation and sanitation problems. The situation turned out to be so disastrous that many residents of the Arab villages were forced to leave this territory (during the 20 years of occupation, the number of Arab residents decreased by 10 times: from 100 to 10 thousand people).

On the Lebanese-Israeli direction, the Litani River is a vital water resource. It was she who became the motive for the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in March 1978 (“Operation Litani”) and in June 1982 (“Peace in Galilee”).

These facts indicate that one of the goals of Israel in its wars with the Arabs was to provide the country with water resources, and this goal was achieved. Approximately 67% of Israel's water resources come from the Arab lands occupied from 1967 to 1982. Of these, 43% is in South Lebanon, 35% in the West Bank and the remaining 22% in the Golan Heights.

The Israeli occupation of part of the Arab territories has led to the emergence of a huge number of economic and political problems. The issue of a fair redistribution of water resources in the region is an integral part of any problem that exists between Israel and the Arab countries.

The “water issue” in the Palestinian-Israeli direction led to the adoption by the parties of a number of agreements: the Declaration on the principles of organizing interim self-government (“Oslo 1”), signed on September 13, 1993, the Cairo Agreement (“Gaza-Jericho”) of May 4, 1994 and the Taba Agreement (“Oslo 2”) of September 28, 1995. As a result, the Palestinian Authority for Water Supply was created, and an agreement was reached on joint management of the water use process. Under the Cairo Agreement, water management in the Gaza Strip and Jericho was transferred to the jurisdiction of the Palestinian National Authority. However, not all issues related to water use have been resolved by signing the above agreements. The signing of the Final Status Agreement was supposed to be the final step in the distribution of water resources between Israel and the Palestinians. However, the curtailment of the Madrid process and a new wave of tension on the Palestinian-Israeli track nullified the agreements reached earlier and cast doubt on the effectiveness of any attempts at a peaceful settlement.

The problem of water resources in the region remains a stumbling block in relations between Israel and the Arab states.

Compared to other aspects of the Arab-Israeli territorial disputes, the issue of Jerusalem is much more internationalized, primarily in terms of the involvement of the United Nations in the situation. If we formally follow the letter of Resolutions 181 and 303 of the UN General Assembly, Jerusalem is a territory that should be under the administration of UN institutions. Therefore, the UN has (or should have) a special responsibility for this city. Jerusalem is a territory alienated by Israel from the UN, and this circumstance makes this organization not just an observer and mediator, but a direct participant in the conflict. From 1947 to the present, the UN has adopted many documents that have created a complex and contradictory legal field around Jerusalem, which should be guided by the drafters of peacekeeping plans and which - directly or indirectly - has a great influence on the position of both Israel and the Palestinians.

Adopted on November 29, 1947, Resolution of the UN General Assembly No. 181 recommended that Jerusalem and its environs be allocated as a special unit - corpus separatum, which is under the control of UN institutions. Throughout the period of the British Mandate, Western Christendom had a clear desire to keep Jerusalem. This was explained, firstly, by the perception of Jerusalem as a religious and historical fiefdom of the Christian world. Secondly, the fear that if Jerusalem falls under the control of any of the Middle Eastern countries, it will be difficult for believing Christians to access holy places in the city. The separation of Jerusalem into an independent unit under international control was perceived as the best solution to the issue after the departure of the British. In addition, the principle of corpus separatum was supported by the Vatican, and the great powers, especially the United States, were forced to reckon with the religious feelings of their own Catholics, as well as with the position of the Catholic states in which they wanted to maintain political influence.

The Soviet position on Palestine consisted, first of all, in demanding the speedy departure of the British and the transfer of the decision of the fate of Palestine to the hands of the UN, which was to be the beginning of Soviet expansion in the region. In parallel, Moscow tried to counteract the rapid growth of American influence. The future of Jerusalem was of interest to the Soviet leadership only in this context.

In the West, the religious component in approaches to the problem of Jerusalem was most clearly expressed in the position of the Catholic states. Historically, Catholics have been a minority among the Christian inhabitants of Jerusalem. In this situation, the main trump card of the Vatican was the presence in the UN of a wide faction of Catholic countries. On April 15, 1949, Pope Pius XII issued an encyclical on Palestine, in which every Catholic was ordered to make every effort to internationalize Jerusalem.

The pragmatic political interests of the United States in Jerusalem consisted of the following considerations:

The gradual realization that the preservation of Jerusalem under the control of the UN will require the intervention of military peacekeeping forces and serious financial injections. At the same time, the United States had no desire to take responsibility for either the first or the second.

The desire to prevent Soviet influence in Jerusalem.

Members of the UN, who accepted the idea of ​​territorial internationalization, practically did not try to implement it. As early as February 16, 1948, the UN Commission on Palestine informed the Security Council that it would not be able to fulfill its duties after the end of the British Mandate without the help of military force. The UN bore full responsibility for preventing hostilities in Jerusalem, but neither before nor after the said statement, the UN did not take any serious measures to protect the city. The UN withdrew itself from the decision on the implementation of the principle of corpus separatum, on the protection of the population of Jerusalem and holy places.

So far, only one document has been adopted that addresses the problem of Jerusalem - the Road Map plan. The text states that in the third phase, called “Achieving an agreement on a final settlement and ending the Palestinian-Israeli conflict”, a Second International Conference will be convened. Its aims are "the establishment of an agreement on the establishment of a Palestinian state within provisional boundaries and the official commencement of the process, with the active, consistent and prompt support of the Quartet, leading to the achievement in 2005 of an agreement on a final settlement, including the issues of borders, Jerusalem, refugees and settlements, as well as the early achievement of a comprehensive settlement with Syria and Lebanon.” This wording looks very vague. On the one hand, as the name of the third stage suggests, the settlement of the question of Jerusalem is seen as an element of the settlement of the bilateral Palestinian-Israeli conflict. On the other hand, the question of Jerusalem is linked to an international conference and even to the achievement of an Israeli-Syrian and Israeli-Lebanese settlement. Of course, it is now obvious that nothing of the kind happened in 2005, but the Road Map is still formally considered by the Quartet, including the UN, as the main settlement plan for today, even with changed deadlines.

2. Arab-Israeli conflict in the era of a multipolar world order

.1 Efforts by the global community to resolve the conflict

On June 24, 2002, US President George W. Bush delivered a speech that marked the beginning of the implementation of a new plan to resolve the Middle East crisis, based on some principles, the effectiveness and necessity of which have been confirmed by many years of practice. For example, the new plan is based on UN Security Council resolutions 242 and 338 adopted in the peace process. Their essence lies in the following requirements: 1) a ceasefire, 2) the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territories through war, 3) confirmation of the need for the withdrawal of Israeli troops from the occupied territories, 4) a just solution to the problem of refugees, 5) the need to end all claims or the state of war and respect and recognition of the territorial integrity, political independence of every state in the region of the Middle East and the right to live in peace, within secure and recognized borders, free from the threat or use of force.

The main points of the plan:

) this plan involves "international control" over its implementation, it will be carried out by the EU, the USA, Russia, the UN;

) the settlement of the process is divided into three stages, as a result of which, by 2005, a permanent state of Palestine will be formed in the West Bank of the Jordan and the Gaza Strip.

The name "Road Map" was given to the document not by chance: its stages are a kind of segments on the way to a peaceful settlement, and the transitional moments from one stage to another are a kind of road signs or kilometer posts.

Stage 2: The Palestinians are obliged to create a new cabinet of ministers, introduce the post of prime minister, refrain from actions in support of terror against the Israelis. When the Palestinians have new leaders, new laws, and new security measures for their neighbors, the US will support the creation of a Palestinian state whose borders and certain aspects of sovereignty will be temporary until a final settlement in the Middle East comes.

The Israelis are required to destroy the settlements created during the rule of A. Sharon, withdraw troops from the territories they occupied after the uprising that began in 2000, and suspend construction in Israeli settlements.

Stage 2: efforts are concentrated on the creation of an independent Palestinian state with temporary borders, the attributes of sovereignty are determined. In this form, the state will play the role of a way station on the way to a permanent settlement

Stage 2: permanent status agreement and end of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. The transition to the third stage will be carried out on the basis of the Quartet's consensus and taking into account the results of the monitoring conducted by both sides. The objectives of the third stage are the continuation of reforms, the strengthening of Palestinian institutions, the fulfillment of Palestinian security obligations, Israeli-Palestinian negotiations aimed at reaching a permanent status agreement during 2005.

Various aspects of the Roadmap plan have caused a huge amount of controversy, not only between the opposing Arabs and Israelis. Even within the Middle East Quartet itself, there are frictions on a number of issues. The first of them manifested itself immediately after the June speech of George W. Bush and his statement that the United States would support the creation of a Palestinian state only on the condition that "the Palestinian people will have new leaders, new institutions of power and a new organization of security measures with neighboring states." It was obvious that this statement meant the unacceptability of Yasser Arafat as the leader of the PNA and a participant in future peace negotiations. However, despite all the hostility of the American president to this man, Russia, the EU and the UN recognized Arafat as the only legally elected leader of the Palestinian people and believed that only the Palestinian people had the right to choose their leader.

The European Union is in favor of the immediate cessation of Israel's construction of new settlements without preconditions. The United States, while continuing to adhere to the traditional view that settlements are the main obstacle to peace, nevertheless agrees with the Israeli position that their construction cannot be frozen while terrorist attacks by the Palestinians continue.

Undoubtedly, among the members of the Quartet there is more agreement on the implementation of the Road Map plan than within any other party interested in a Middle East settlement, and in resolving contentious issues they most often come to a consensus. For example, the refusal of the United States to officially announce the removal of Arafat from the post of head of the Palestinian Autonomy, but instead the adoption of the Quartet's decision to reduce the leader's power and introduce the post of prime minister. “As a result of efforts, we managed to formulate a proposal that includes a very complex balance of interests of the parties to the conflict,” said Russian Foreign Minister I. Ivanov.

The opinion of the Israelis regarding the "Road Map" also cannot be called unified. According to the results of sociological surveys conducted as part of the peace project, it turned out that about 20% of the entire Jewish population of Israel is categorically against any kind of peace agreements with the Arabs, and half of those who recognize the Road Map plan as one of the likely ways of settlement, believe that it just won't work.

On the issue of Palestinian refugees, the Israelis insist on a limited return to their former place of residence, motivating this statement with very simple mathematical calculations. Israel is home to 5.1 million Jews and about 1.26 million Arabs. If all the refugees return home, then the Arab population will increase to about 6 million people, and this will mean the actual end of the Jewish nation-state.

The plan announced a limited number of Palestinian refugees who have a legal right to return home, and according to the Palestinians, every refugee has the right to return. The Palestinians also confirm this statement by the fact that the Jews have the right to return to their historical homeland after more than 2000 years, while the Arab population left these territories only a few decades ago and also has the right to return.

In settling the Middle East conflict, one cannot ignore the positions of the countries surrounding Israel and Palestine. The first group is Jordan and Egypt, whose position is mainly focused on the United States. At the moment, these countries are at peace with Israel, their recognition of Israel as a state has taken place and is officially fixed. Their main task is to convince the Israelis and Palestinians to accept the Road Map in its original form, it is about pushing only Israel to accept, because. for the Palestinians, in the eyes of these countries, the plan is more beneficial. Jordan supports it without making any significant changes. The second group of countries is Lebanon and Syria. In their opinion, the "Road Map" is just another attempt by the United States to bring the situation in the Middle East in a beneficial direction. As long as the US is proposing plans, the Palestinians will not have the opportunity to speak with Israel on an equal footing.

Today, the objective reality is such that the civil war actually going on in the Gaza Strip and threatening to spread to the West Bank of the Jordan River is gradually turning from an “ideological” conflict between “secular nationalists” from Fatah and “Islamic radicals” from Hamas into an armed confrontation between various tribalist , community-clan and religious-sectarian groups, of which, in essence, the local Arab-Palestinian society consists.

It is already clear that the experiment to quickly consolidate these groups of different origins into something remotely resembling a single community has failed, there is no “Palestinian nation”. This implies the impossibility of the emergence in the Palestinian territories in the foreseeable future of a relatively stable regime with which it would be possible to conduct a dialogue according to the “peace in exchange for territories” scheme, and Israel is unlikely to be able to separate from the Palestinian Arabs in one form or another, leaving them to themselves deal with their problems while maintaining a relatively peaceful status quo.

Today, not only the Israeli right, but also quite a few representatives of the left flank of Israeli politics, as well as the majority of centrists, believe that the events taking place in the “territories” are quite capable of removing the idea of ​​a Palestinian state from the agenda altogether. Nevertheless, representatives of the Palestinian Authority continue contacts with representatives of the world community: on February 19, 2007, a meeting was held in Jerusalem between Israeli Prime Minister E. Olmert, PNA head M. Abbas and US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. It did not achieve any concrete results on a Palestinian-Israeli settlement. The participants of the meeting confirmed the previous agreements and agreed on a new round of negotiations. A week later, M. Abbas visited Great Britain, Germany and France. The main purpose of his trip was to obtain support for the emerging Palestinian government of national unity and lifting the blockade from the Palestinian territories. In London, British Prime Minister Tony Blair said that progress can be made in the Middle East settlement by appealing to the "reasonable" members of Hamas. In Berlin, German Chancellor Angela Merkel welcomed the creation of a coalition government by the Palestinians, but at the same time, on behalf of the European Union, she stressed that the new cabinet should renounce terrorism, recognize Israel and all previously concluded Palestinian-Israeli agreements. In Paris, M. Abbas asked the President of France to act as an intermediary in establishing negotiations between the new Palestinian government and Israel. France promised to cooperate with the coalition Palestinian government. Hamas leader H. Mashaal also made a trip abroad to receive support for the government of national unity being formed. On February 22, a regular meeting of the international "quartet" on Middle East settlement was held in Berlin. Its participants confirmed that the new Palestinian government must be committed to the demands of the international community.

In the period from March 26 to April 1, 2007, the most important events in the region were associated with the next (XIXth) summit of the Arab League member countries in Riyadh (March 28-29) and Iran. The meeting of the top leaders of the Arab states, practically without changes, confirmed the Saudi plan for the Arab-Israeli settlement of 2002.

The main outcome of the all-Arab summit in Riyadh was the unanimous confirmation by its participants of their commitment to the plan for a peaceful settlement with Israel, adopted at the summit meeting in Beirut in 2002. As you know, this document provides for Israel's withdrawal from all Arab territories seized in 1967, recognition them an independent Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital and a fair solution to the problem of Palestinian refugees (the right to return to their former places of residence). In response, the Arabs pledge to recognize Israel, sign peace agreements with it and establish normal relations. The plan, according to the plan of the Arabs, should become "a platform for a comprehensive settlement in the Middle East." Riyadh urged Israel to "accept the Arab initiative and seize the opportunity to resume direct negotiations on all fronts." A special commission has been set up consisting of Egypt, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, which should establish contacts with the UN Secretary General, members of the UN Security Council, the international Quartet on the Middle East settlement (Russia, the USA, the EU, the UN) and other interested parties. The aim of the contacts is to restart the peace process and secure support for the Arab initiative. The decisions of the summit on BVU were supported by Russia, the European Union, and the UN Secretary General. The United States regards them as an attempt to "make contacts with Israel" and "act constructively in the interests of all the powers in the region." Israel reacted to the decisions of the summit with very cautious optimism, but, as before, does not agree with the demand for the right to return refugees to their former places of residence.

In general, the results of the Riyadh meeting showed the desire of the Arab countries to move the process of resolving the conflict with Israel off the dead center, to try to overcome the differences in the Arab world through dialogue and restore mutual trust, and to give a new impetus to Arab solidarity.

The UN, the European Union, the US and Russia are members of the Quartet on the Middle East settlement, but the role of each of them is far from clear. Europe's main weakness is that today it is not a sufficiently recognized actor who can advance the peace process and who is trusted by the parties. There are several obstacles to an effective common foreign policy in the EU in the Middle East and, in particular, in relation to Israel.

Prior to the appointment of an EU envoy in 1996, Europe was riven in Middle Eastern affairs by hidden rivalries rooted in different historical experiences. Today's foreign policy, which does not cross the borders of relations between EU members, will not be able to turn the EU into an active, influential, valuable actor. Representatives from European countries are practically inaudible in the region, they are not remembered for their activities or statements. This is partly due to the principle of European institutions - the changing presidency in foreign affairs. Responsible persons change constantly and quite often, which harms the effectiveness of activities. While US representatives in the Middle East surround themselves with the press and talk a lot in public, European representatives keep a low profile. But the image is not only about the means. mass media. This is also the result of activities in the field of education. It should be noted that there are very few centers for the study of the problems of the Middle East in European universities. Constant concern for American support or following US initiatives. Fearful of displeasing America, Europeans often follow in the wake of its policies, even when it is contrary to their own interests.

The internal situation in Europe is not conducive to good relations with Israel: about 10% of the population of the Maghreb countries live in Europe. Of these, 3 million people - in France alone. About 2 million Turks live in Germany, of which at least 400 thousand are ethnic Kurds. This creates influential lobbies in European countries. The role of pro-Israel lobbying groups in Europe is relatively weak. In Europe, where Jewish and other pro-Israeli organizations are less numerous and less influential than in the US, there is no Israeli lobbying pressure on the authorities.

Geographical proximity determines Europe's interest in the peace process. Europe is exposed to the consequences of underdevelopment and instability in the Middle East, terrorism, illegal immigration, smuggling, as well as more dangerous manifestations, including arms proliferation mass destruction. Progress in the Arab-Israeli negotiations is not the final, but a necessary condition for the elimination of all these threats.

After European countries were terrorized by the Palestinians in the 1970s, most continental European governments to this day look back at how their policies might be perceived by radical elements in the Arab world.

Europe is also more dependent on energy imports from the Middle East. European countries, with the exception of Great Britain and Norway (which have their own oil reserves), depend on oil imports by 50%. And a large share of these imports come from the Middle East and North Africa. Although the sources of oil can be changed, Europe's heavy dependence on energy imports determines to this day its interest in ensuring stability in the Arab world.

In theory, the EU has enough size, wealth, military capability and interest in the peace process to be as much of an intermediary as the US. In practice, the EU envoy represents dozens of nations of different weights, with different perspectives, different goals, different historical backgrounds. Many countries consider the sphere of foreign policy to be personal, not subject to subjugation to common European interests, as a sphere of their sovereignty.

The difference between European states follows from their geographical location, culture and historical role in the region. The UK has historically warm relations and close trade ties with Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Oman and, unlike its European partners, is not dependent on oil imports. France has special "kinship" feelings and responsibility for Lebanon with its Christian minority, and sympathy for Iraq, where France has long supported the secular Ba'ath regime. Italy has a special trade relationship with Libya, thanks to which it receives a large amount of oil. In addition, it is particularly susceptible to the influx of refugees and immigrants from Arab countries. Germany has had a special relationship with Israel since the Holocaust, and the Netherlands also has historical ties to Israel, which they have long supported more strongly than their other European partners. Greece's relations with Israel are deteriorating due to links with the Arab world as Israel's growing strategic partnership with Turkey, Greece's historical adversary, worsens.

The EU's difficulty in pursuing a common effective Middle East policy is primarily the result of the differing views and interests of its most important members. These problems are exacerbated by the inability of the EU's institutional structures to develop a unified approach where one does not exist.

In the light of these facts, we can conclude that the European Union is not always united in its foreign policy towards the Middle East. There are countries more and less willing to support and cooperate with Israel for various reasons. But in general, some general trends can be identified. In the field of the peace process between Israel and the Palestinians, European countries are characterized by an increasing desire to take part in negotiations, since the role of a sponsor and an outside observer did not suit everyone. In the economic sphere, however, there is a noticeable interest both in the benefits of economic and scientific cooperation with Israel, and in the prospects for cooperation in the Middle East region as a whole. And although the idea of ​​cooperation today is clearly untenable, in 1994-2000. steps have been taken to get the parties accustomed to meeting and negotiating their economic relations. However, pan-European trends are gradually leaning away from Israel. In both France and Germany, with the passing of the Holocaust generation, public opinion has increasingly condemned Israel's policies.

On October 2003, the UN General Assembly, at its 10th emergency special session, approved a resolution requiring Israel to "stop building and dismantle the 'security wall' in the Occupied Palestinian Territory."

The resolution comes after the United States vetoed a United Nations Security Council resolution a week earlier to condemn Israel's construction of a barrier wall. As is known, the right of veto does not work in the General Assembly. Unlike UN Security Council resolutions, UN General Assembly resolutions are not binding, but they reflect the attitude of the world community to a particular international event. 144 UN members voted in favor of the resolution, 4 voted against (USA, Israel, Marshall Islands and Micronesia), 12 countries abstained.

The main claims of the General Assembly boiled down to the fact that the line of the wall under construction does not coincide with the so-called green line and in fact annexes Palestinian lands, including the territory of East Jerusalem. In response to these accusations, Israeli Prime Minister A. Sharon said that "terror built the wall" and that the protective wall is a temporary step that Israel took to prevent terrorist attacks until the full political settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

February 2004 fifteen judges of the International Court of Justice heard the opinion of only one side - the Palestinian and the Arab. The first session of the court opened with a speech by the head of the delegation of the Palestinian National Authority, the Ambassador of Palestine to the UN, H. al-Kidwa, who actually called on the international community to impose sanctions on Israel. N. al-Kidwa said that the construction of the wall "consolidates the occupation and poses a threat to a peaceful solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict." Secretary General of the League of Arab States A. Musa in his speech noted that "the construction of the wall, as a result of which the Palestinians will lose 40% of the territory of the West Bank, is an unprecedented violation of generally recognized legal norms."

The Palestinians believe that the construction of the separation wall symbolizes the "foreignness of the Zionist entity in the Middle East" and, accordingly, the inability of the Israelis to integrate into the region. According to representatives of the Palestinian government, Israel decided to boycott the International Court of Justice because "it will not be able to defend its position, which is nothing more than a manifestation of racism." According to Palestinian leadership spokesman S. Erikat, the separation wall is a deliberate attempt by the Israeli government to sabotage Bush's plan to create a Palestinian state, undermine the peace process and destroy the road map. The Palestinians say they have no objection to Israel's construction of a separation wall along the Green Line or on Israeli territory.

In addition, the Palestinians argue that if Israel continues to carry out its plans to build a wall, then the PNA leadership will consider the possibility of declaring Palestinian independence. However, it is hard to imagine what such a "patchwork state" would look like, set up in the isolated Palestinian territories of the West Bank, interspersed with Jewish settlements. (There are 75 Israeli settlements in the West Bank, where about 300,000 Israelis live).

During the tour in mid-February 2004 of PNA Prime Minister A. Qurei to European countries in order to obtain moral support for the Palestinian position on the issue of building a "security wall", not a single leader of European states expressed his approval of Tel Aviv's actions. So, the head of the Catholic Church, Pope John Paul II, said that "mutual understanding on holy land needs forgiveness, not revenge, bridges, not walls." EU High Representative for Foreign Policy J. Solana said that the construction of the "security wall" and the expropriation of Palestinian possessions for its construction in the West Bank "does not comply with international law."

Many international humanitarian and human rights organizations have condemned the construction of a protective wall in the Palestinian territories. A week before the start of the International Court of Justice's hearing in The Hague on the legitimacy of the Israeli separation wall, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) appealed to Israel "not to plan or build a separation barrier in the occupied territories."

As the Israeli author A. Eldar notes, “as a result of the construction of a system of separation walls, the Palestinians will become prisoners in their own country, completely dependent on the goodwill of the occupying authorities, driven like cattle into a corral behind barbed wire, from which they will not come out without special passes. This is the Middle East version of apartheid, conceived and carried out by A. Sharon. So the purpose of the wall is not to separate the West Bank from Israel, but to drive the Palestinians onto the reservation." Since it is almost impossible to exist normally under such conditions, this will eventually lead to the resettlement of Palestinians in other countries. As noted by Israeli researchers G. Algazi and A. Bdeir, "Palestinian society runs the risk of being left without people and abandoning the dream of independence."

The leading Arab countries unanimously condemned Israel's construction of a "racist separation wall". Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal, during a press conference on February 10, 2004 in Riyadh, qualified the construction of the wall as an attempt to change the status quo and divide Palestine into cantons. He called on the United States and the world community to intervene immediately to end Israel's unilateral actions. One of the few Arab leaders who maintains a dialogue with the Israeli leadership, Jordanian King Abdullah II, during a meeting in Amman in mid-February 2004 with former Israeli Prime Minister Sh. Peres, once again condemned the construction of the "separation wall", noting that "it poses a threat to Jordan and a future independent Palestinian state."

The US President's position on disunity turned out to be quite definite. From time to time, representatives of the US administration made "remarks" to the Israeli government regarding the possible negative impact of the separation wall on the formation of an independent Palestinian state in the future. However, during one of his meetings with A. Sharon, George Bush said the following: "We must negotiate to make sure that the wall sends the right signal to the Palestinians."

It is obvious that the construction of the "protective wall" creates a new reality, a new additional obstacle in the way of Israeli-Palestinian settlement and the formation of an independent Palestinian state.

The positions of the members of the "quartet", created to resolve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, are quite contradictory and uncertain. The European Union is an association of states with different views on how to resolve Middle East disputes. The United States of America, positioning itself as the most active participant in the peace process, nevertheless takes or approves actions directly or indirectly aimed at aggravating contradictions (as was the case with the construction of the separation wall). The activities of the United Nations and the resolutions adopted by it significantly complicated the situation with the determination of the final status of Jerusalem. As for the Russian Federation, it would be appropriate to refer to the Review of Russian Foreign Policy, approved by V.V. Putin in 2007

“The political and diplomatic settlement of crisis situations, especially in the Near and Middle East, has no reasonable alternative, the document says. - Russia cannot join ultimatums that drive everyone into a dead end, create new crises in an already seriously destabilized region, and strike at the authority of the UN Security Council. The use of force to enforce peace should be an exceptional measure to which the international community may resort, in strict accordance with the UN Charter, if all other avenues for conflict resolution have been exhausted.”

The root cause of the problems faced by the countries of the Middle East is the unsettledness of the Arab-Israeli conflict. And efforts aimed at unblocking the Palestinian-Israeli conflict remain among the priorities of Russian Middle East policy. “Russia sees its task in that the leadership of Israel, the PNA and the Arab states make the right decisions aimed at ending the confrontation and transferring conflict situations into the mainstream of a political settlement. So far, there is no realistic alternative to the Quartet as a mechanism for collective external influence on the situation in the second-tier banks, and it is necessary to promote its effectiveness and efficiency.”

Resolutions 242, 338, 1397 and 1515 of the UN Security Council are called as the basis for decision-making, it is proposed to convene an international conference on the Middle East, the need is emphasized integrated approach, involvement in international efforts to resolve all interested parties, including Syria and Iran.

The ultimate goal is considered to be the development of a system of regional security in the Middle East with the participation of all countries of the region, which would include the provision of equal guarantees of military security, the establishment of a zone free of nuclear weapons.

2.2 The Arab-Israeli conflict in the light of the intensification of international terrorism

The colonization of Palestine by international Zionist organizations and the Arab-Israeli wars that followed the formation of the State of Israel in 1948. With the consent of the British government, set forth in the so-called "Balfour letter" (1917), the World Zionist Organization (WZO) in the 20s. 20th century began buying land in Palestine and expanding the emigration of Jews in order to prepare the conditions for the creation of the State of Israel in the Palestinian territory.

The confrontation that arose between the Palestinians and the Jews subsequently escalated into an armed confrontation. The Irgun and Stern organizations appeared in the Jewish community and began terrorist activities not only against local population but also against the British institutions in Palestine and their personnel. For example, in April 1948, the Irgun militants carried out a massacre of the population in the Arab village of Deir Yassin, which they captured, by shooting 254 of its inhabitants. In 1940-1945. Jewish terrorists carried out the assassination in Cairo of the British Minister for the Middle East, Lord Moten; attempts were made to assassinate Prime Minister A. Eden and E. Barker, who commanded British troops in Palestine, with the help of miniature explosive devices built into postal items, etc.

The attacks against the British were intended to force the British authorities to lift their restrictions on the entry of Jews into Palestine. The activities of the Irgun and Stern were directed by the illegally created Jewish Agency (EA) intelligence service, with the subsequent name "Old Mossad".

The leaders of the EA, ignoring the decision of the UN, unilaterally proclaimed the establishment of the State of Israel on May 15, 1948, which led to an armed confrontation between the Palestinians and Israelis, which soon escalated into the first Arab-Israeli war.

About 1 million Palestinians were forced to emigrate to neighboring Arab countries. Among them, Palestinian organizations of various orientations arose, which turned out to be united in one thing - using all means, including terrorism, to destroy Israel and create their own state in Palestine.

Egypt, Syria, Libya, Iraq, providing support and assistance to Palestinian organizations, sought to use the latter in their political plans. The emergence of Israel was extremely negatively perceived in the Muslim world. The founder of the Egyptian organization "Muslim Brotherhood" Hassan al-Banna called the emergence of the Jewish state "the penetration of Zionism into Palestine and a challenge to the Arab nation and Islam."

Strengthening since the 1920s XX century, US expansion in the Near and Middle East. The Treaty of Versailles (January 1920) provided the United States with great opportunities to start their expansion in the region, especially since the Middle East began to turn into the center of world oil production. In 1924, the United States, on the basis of an American-British agreement, became co-owners of the League of Nations mandate to govern Palestine, and in 1948, American troops were already entering Lebanon under the pretext of "providing security in the region." The US Middle East policy, largely focused on strengthening the strategic partnership with Israel, has contributed to the fact that the anti-American orientation has increasingly taken a leading place in the aspirations and actions of terrorist organizations in the region.

The rise of fundamentalist Islamic radicalism. The collapse of the Soviet Union led to the formation of an ideological vacuum in the Near and Middle East, which began to quickly fill with various kinds of concepts based on the constructs of radical Islam.

The basis of Islamic radicalism, including Wahhabism, is the provision on takfir (accusation of disbelief) and the doctrine of jihad (holy war for faith).

Israel and the USA are declared as the main opponents of radical Islam. The spiritual mentor of the Iranian "Islamic revolution" R. Khomeini quite figuratively stated: "If every Muslim pours a bucket of water on Israel, the flood will destroy this Zionist state."

Islamic radicals oppose the expansionist policy of Israel, against its suppression of the actions of the Palestinian people, demanding the creation of their own independent state. The anti-American orientation of Islamic radicalism is explained by the protest of the international Islamic community against the westernization of life in Muslim countries, as well as by the fact that the United States constantly acts as an ally of Israel and constantly interferes in the internal affairs of Islamic countries, while pursuing its own selfish goals. Islamist tendencies have become a constant factor in public life in the Arab countries, and the stronger the degree of Westernization in them, the stronger the public protest in Muslim countries, the more active are the processes of formation of the radical opposition, its participation in protests against the ruling regimes.

The failure of the Middle East settlement (BVU). Under the concept of "Middle East settlement" (BVU), it is customary to consider a peaceful settlement long time the ongoing Arab-Israeli conflict, at the core of which is the Palestinian-Israeli confrontation over ways to create an independent Palestinian state in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.

The right of the Palestinians to form their own state is enshrined in relevant UN decisions, as well as international treaties, including the Palestinian-Israeli "Declaration and principles of an interim settlement" signed in Oslo (Norway) in 1993.

Israel's refusal to comply with these agreements and the use of its armed forces to suppress Palestinian protests led to an uprising ("intifada") of the Palestinians (December 1987) and new actions in early 2000 ("intifada-2"), which took on a wide scope led to the participation of armed groups of Palestinian organizations in them and the intensification of their terrorist activities against the military and civilian population of Israel.

Israelis meet the most active resistance from the extremist Islamic organizations Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) and Islamic Jihad, advocating the creation of an Islamic state in Palestine.

The Israeli authorities carry out mass arrests among the participants in the uprising, resort to executions of rallies and demonstrations, bombardment of the administrative institutions of the Palestinian National Autonomy (PNA), including the residence of its President Yasser Arafat. The Palestinians themselves, as well as some foreign media, qualify these actions of the Israeli authorities as state terrorism (terror).

The attempts of cosponsors of STBs (USA, Soviet Union - Russia, some Western countries) to determine the ways of establishing peace in Palestine. The main reason for the failure of the BVU is the too pro-Israeli position of the United States, which does not allow infringement of its "strategic ally". The American administration is now, together with Israel, in favor of removing Yasser Arafat from power and replacing him with a more "compliant" Palestinian politician.

The actions of the US and Israel against the Palestinians contribute to the surge of anti-Israeli, anti-American terrorism not only in the PNA and Israel, but also in neighboring Arab countries.

In September 2002, the "quartet" of international mediators, consisting of representatives of the United States, the European Union, Russia and the United Nations, prepared in New York a draft plan for a phased BVU, the implementation of which should result in the proclamation of a Palestinian state in 2005.

However, the implementation of this plan has been called into question as a result of the second war in the Gulf, initiated by the Americans. The Israeli authorities support the implementation of American plans for the "restructuring" of the Middle East.

At the same time, it should be noted that the actions of Palestinian organizations against Israel, the terrorist attacks they carry out, disorganize Israeli society, damage the country's economy, lead to the intensification of extremism and terrorism in Israel, and complicate its international position.

Only the future can answer the question of whether certain events that have become the center of attention of the whole world are really historical, epochal, capable of having deep and long-term consequences, or whether the suddenness and drama of these events involuntarily makes people exaggerate their significance.

One way or another, the shock that humanity experienced on September 11, 2001, when planes hijacked by terrorists crashed into buildings in New York and Washington, made the world think about the causes and possible consequences of this catastrophe. “What drives these people and can we expect anything even more terrible from them in the very near future?” - this question is asked everywhere.

A myriad of works have been written about international terrorism: it would seem that this phenomenon has already been studied far and wide, and yet, there is always something ominously mysterious, as if irrational, not fully understood in it. No wonder the American professor Martha Crenshaw wrote not so long ago: “The scientific community has yet to achieve an intellectual understanding of why terrorism exists. Neither the causes of terrorism nor its consequences can be satisfactorily explained." However, it is still necessary to try to explain: the monstrous drama of September 11 showed that the dragon of terrorism is not only alive and full of strength, but is really rearing up.

It is international terrorism, which goes beyond the local framework, that is recognized today, perhaps, as the main danger threatening humanity in the coming century. And we have to admit that this sphere of terrorist activity is dominated by what is usually - and incorrectly - called "Islamic terrorism". In general, the correctness of the wording in such a sensitive issue is especially important. When they say: “Muslims destroyed New York skyscrapers” (although it would be more correct to say: “Hindus killed Mahatma Gandhi” or “Jews killed Yitzhak Rabin”, although in both cases the nationality of the killers was just that.

The vast majority of people do not know anything about Islam at all, and interest in this religion, for obvious reasons, has recently been growing rapidly, and the myth of the special militancy, almost even bloodthirstiness of Islam, which supposedly requires its followers to fight ruthlessly against "infidels" is spreading more and more widely. ", that is, with the infidels. All this, of course, is completely wrong. In Islam. As in any great religion, different, not always seemingly compatible values ​​are combined, there is a lot of contradictory. In the Qur'an, if you wish, you can find statements that can be interpreted as militant. For example, many now talk about jihad, interpreting this term as a “holy war against the infidels,” which allegedly gives Muslims the right and even obliges them to fight against the non-Muslim world by all means, up to terror, which can also be justified by the concept of jihad. This is a one-sided and misinterpretation. The American scholar Tomal Lippman noted that the word "jihad" embodies the duty assigned by the Prophet to his followers to defend the faith. In the most general sense, "jihad" means the struggle against evil and the devil, self-discipline (common to all three Abrahamic religions), with the help of which believers strive to follow the will of God, to be better Muslims.

They also talk and write a lot about fundamentalism, erroneously equating this concept with such as radicalism, extremism and even terrorism. Meanwhile, fundamentalism, preaching the need for a ban on the origins of faith, on the original purity of religion, unclouded by later layers, including traditions and interpretations accumulated over centuries, can be inherent in any religion. He was born, by the way, in the United States, in the bosom of Protestantism: in 1919, a group of Presbyterian, Baptist and Methodist pastors created the World Christian Fundamentalist Association in order to protect what they called the fundamental provisions of the faith (in particular, they denied Darwin's theory of the origin of man ). Representatives of Islamic fundamentalism (called as-salafiya in Arabic, from the word as-salaf - ancestors) also call for a return to the origins of their religion, by no means meaning violence against non-believers.

Therefore, it is wrong to blame Islam for crimes allegedly committed in the name of this religion. And yet - the fact remains: the most ruthless, massive, "global" acts of terror are committed by people who call themselves Muslims and are justified by the teachings of Islam.

There are three ranges of sentiments (from broader to narrower) that underlie the motivation of modern international terrorists. We are talking about anti-Western, anti-American and anti-Israeli sentiments.

Anti-Western sentiments are a direct consequence of the persistence in a new form of the spirit of anti-colonialism that gripped the peoples of Asia and Africa both after the First and especially after the Second World War. It would be wrong to think that anti-colonialism disappeared after the withdrawal of foreign troops and the achievement of national independence. It has evaporated only on a practical level, in business and everyday relationships: the British and French can be quite welcome today in their former colonies. But in the mentality, psyche, ideology, it remains. It is inherent in general to all discriminated and oppressed communities: in countries with more or less pronounced anti-Semitism, for example, a Jew, even if he was rich and famous, and did not encounter open manifestations of anti-Semite phobia, still felt that the “indigenous population” was looking at him from top to bottom, just like in Israel, an Arab, even much more affluent than his Jewish neighbors, and living in a luxurious villa, feels the same way. And his traditional feeling of being "second-class" in the eyes of "whites" - a feeling that inevitably gives rise to an inferiority complex and the accompanying resentment, anger, protest - is typical not only for the inhabitants of the Third World, but also for those Asians and Africans (partly for Latin Americans) who reside in the United States.

And in this sense, we can say that the "wrath of Muslims" is just a special case. Quite simply, Muslim society, especially the Arab one, has fared worse in the modern world than others. Nasser's dreams of creating a united great Arab world ("new giant") remained dreams, and although several Arab countries, thanks to oil wealth, managed to break through to prosperity, on the whole, Arab society has the right to experience deep disappointment from the entire post-colonial stage of its development. All secular systems of government, from Western parliamentary democracy to Nasser-Ba'ath "socialism", including military dictatorships, have been tried and failed in terms of overcoming poverty, economic recovery, eradicating or at least reducing corruption, social justice, political efficiency and approval of the Arab world in a worthy place in the modern world order. It is not surprising that over the past decades, voices have become louder and louder, claiming that the root cause of all the troubles of the Arabs was the departure from true, righteous Islam, from the precepts of the Prophet, the desire to slavishly copy the systems created by an alien, non-Muslim civilization, which only led to damage to morals, the decline of traditional values, the growth of self-interest and the disintegration of the upper classes of society, groveling before imperialism. Westernization, the imitation of Western patterns of life, was declared the main evil, the slogan sounded: "Al Islam hua al-hol" ("Islam is the solution").

Accordingly, the West - the same West, which until recently was a direct invader, occupier, colonial master, and for this reason alone could not leave a good memory - has again become an enemy, but in a new sense. In the eyes of all the dissatisfied and disappointed, who definitely want to find an answer - who is to blame for the spread of immorality, corruption, pornography, drug addiction, economic turmoil and the fall in the prestige of the Arab world - the West is the most convenient target.

3. Status and development of the Arab-Israeli dialogue

.1 Positions of the parties on the issue of conflict resolution

Without completely abandoning the Road Map, but at the same time, announcing the absence of a Palestinian partner with whom to conduct constructive negotiations, in 2005, Israeli Prime Minister A. Sharon launched a plan for a unilateral disengagement from the Palestinians. Despite the warning of a number of experts, including American ones, that this plan contradicts the Road Map, since it provides for the preservation of Israeli settlements on the West Bank of the river. Jordan, it was fully supported by President George W. Bush and adopted as the "basis" of the "Road Map". Following the United States, the unilateral disengagement plan was approved by all participants in the Middle East Quartet, who at the same time emphasized that they perceive the Sharon plan only as a “zero cycle” of the Road Map, which could lead to a final cessation of the Israeli occupation of the Gaza Strip, and also to assist in the resumption of progress towards a full-scale settlement of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. The essence of this approach was most clearly explained in one of her speeches by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice: “We deeply respect that courageous step, which was made by Prime Minister A. Sharon, having gone to the disengagement in Gaza and in the north of the West Bank of the river. Jordan. However, remember that this is only the first step.

It should be noted that political analysts provided two possible scenarios for the development of events after the implementation of the unilateral disengagement plan.

According to the first, more optimistic one, the PNA should have realized the inefficiency of terror, rebuild the economy, and use US assistance to prepare for the creation of an independent Palestinian state.

According to the second, pessimistic, immediately after the disengagement, a new round of terror was to begin, which would fall primarily on the Israeli cities bordering the Gaza Strip, as well as the Jewish settlements of Judea and Samaria.

Today, when the active phase of the unilateral disengagement plan with the Palestinians has been completed, and the events of the past two months clearly demonstrate that it is the second scenario that is gradually beginning to unfold in the region, the problem of the prospects for the practical implementation of the Road Map plan seems extremely relevant.

It should be noted that today official Israel continues to demonstrate its commitment to the Road Map. According to A. Sharon's recent statement at a conference in Tel Aviv, the "Road Map" is the only viable plan for a peaceful settlement in the Middle East and "there is no better plan for the future of Israel." The Israeli Prime Minister stressed several times that the disengagement is a one-time event, after which the implementation of the Road Map should immediately begin. At the same time, A. Sharon especially focuses on the fact that it will come into effect only after terror has completely ceased in the region, terrorist organizations have been disarmed, and reforms have been carried out in the territories controlled by the PNA.

As is known, the Road Map provided for the convening, under the auspices of the Quartet, of an international conference on Middle East settlement after the parliamentary elections in the PNA, at which the process of creating an independent Palestinian state within temporary borders would be launched. In this regard, the US administration is carrying out contacts and consultations with the Palestinian leadership, the purpose of which is to proclaim a Palestinian state within temporary borders in accordance with the second stage of the Road Map plan. At the same time, Palestinian sources note, the White House administration sees this temporary state precisely within the borders of the Gaza Strip. As for the West Bank Jordan, at this stage, the American leadership considers this territory "scattered cantons, control over which is the subject of future negotiations."

However, the Palestinian National Authority categorically opposes the proclamation of the "State of Gaza". The Palestinians argue that the second phase of the Roadmap is just an option, not a mandatory item. In their opinion, there is a significant possibility that in the future the temporary borders of the Palestinian state may become permanent. "Most of all, we fear that the Gaza Strip will turn into a huge prison closed to the outside world," Mahmoud Abbas recently said in an interview with the Al-Khalij newspaper, published in the United Arab Emirates.

In order to prevent the creation of a Palestinian state within the provisional borders, the Palestinians are pushing for an immediate transition to final status negotiations, which are part of the third phase of the Roadmap. Thus, during a meeting at the White House between US President George W. Bush and Chairman of the Palestinian Authority Abu Mazen, which took place back in May 2005, the Palestinian leader proposed skipping the second stage of the Road Map implementation and immediately starting negotiations on a permanent status, which should include a final solution to issues related to the borders of a future Palestinian state, the problem of Jerusalem, and the right of return of the Palestinian refugees.

The Israeli government, for its part, categorically opposes such a scenario, emphasizing that it will not start negotiations on the final status until the PNA leaders can guarantee the security of the Israeli borders and disarm Hamas. This point of view is also shared by the American administration, which, together with the Israeli side, has repeatedly stated that the PNA has not even fulfilled the “precondition” of the Road Map plan, namely, it has not disarmed terrorist groups.

It should be noted that the Palestinian terror, which did not stop after the completion of the unilateral disengagement program, significantly delays the prospects for a further Palestinian-Israeli peace settlement. Thus, the chairman of the All-Israeli headquarters for the fight against terror, reserve general D. Arditi believes that the modern intensification of the terrorist activities of Palestinian militants can lead to a significant escalation of the conflict and completely cross out the chances for the resumption of Palestinian-Israeli negotiations.

It should be emphasized that the out-of-control Palestinian militants put Mahmoud Abbas in a very difficult situation. On the one hand, the Palestinian leader needs Israel to make concessions - this would increase his popularity.

On the other hand, any steps taken by the Palestinian authorities against Islamic Jihad and Hamas, which Israel demands from the PNA chairman, will immediately aggravate relations between the Palestinian leadership and the radical Palestinian opposition, which could have the most serious consequences for Abbas.

To date, the resumption of negotiations between the Palestinian and Israeli sides is a first step towards returning the peace process to the rails of the Road Map. However, according to A. Sharon's statement, as long as the terrorist acts continue, holding a Palestinian-Israeli meeting at the highest level remains irrelevant. As a result, the first Palestinian-Israeli summit since the completion of the unilateral disengagement program has been postponed indefinitely three times already.

Moreover, the complexity of the issues that are on the agenda of the future summit indicates that the negotiations will not be without serious difficulties. Thus, the main topics of A. Sharon's meeting with Abu Mazen will be issues related to the continuation of the implementation of the Road Map plan for the Middle East peace settlement and the implementation of the agreements reached in Sharm el-Sheikh. In particular, the Palestinian side insists on including in the agenda of the summit such issues as the release of Palestinian prisoners from Israeli prisons, the withdrawal of the Israeli army from the Arab cities of the West Bank of the river. Jordan as of the end of September 2000 and the complete cessation of the construction of the security fence and barriers in Jewish settlements in the West Bank of the river. Jordan. The PNA also intends to demand additional easing on the regime of movement between the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.

However, given some statements by the Israeli side, this will not be easy to achieve. First, Israel categorically opposes the release of Palestinian prisoners involved in the killing of Israelis. Secondly, the IDF command opposes the transfer of cities in Judea and Samaria to the control of the PNA, citing the fact that the Palestinian Authority is too helpless to be entrusted with security control in the region. In addition, the Israeli Prime Minister has repeatedly made it clear that Israel will not agree with the participation of the terrorist organization "Hamas" in the Palestinian government and will demand tougher measures to combat terror from Mahmoud Abbas.

Thus, the prospects for the practical implementation of the "Road Map" plan for the Middle East peace settlement at the moment remain rather illusory. It should be specially emphasized that the degree of distrust between Israel and the PNA is now so high that without any serious participation of the international "quartet" and the provision of real guarantees to the conflicting parties that their interests will be respected, to resume political dialogue and, all the more so, to achieve fundamental shifts on the path to a full-scale Palestinian Israeli peace settlement is not possible.

It must be admitted that today there is no basis in Palestinian-Israeli relations. Moreover, the real conditions in which attempts will be made to implement the road map are characterized by an increased sense of mutual distrust and suspicion of the parties. The discrediting of the Oslo process, the failure of the peace initiatives of the E. Barak administration, the bloody terrorist attacks of the second intifada, the ongoing anti-Israeli propaganda in the Arab countries - all this has led to the fact that, according to polls, the majority of Israelis tend to see the destruction of the Jewish state as the goal of the PNA and the Arab countries of the region, and not the desire to implement the principle of "two states for two peoples." It can be said with certainty that the Palestinians today do not show much confidence in the idea of ​​a peaceful settlement and constructive dialogue with Israel, priority is again given to armed resistance and the tactics of terrorist acts.

Full cooperation and equal involvement of all Quartet members (US, EU, Russia and UN) in the implementation of the initiative are no less controversial. In itself, the idea of ​​a Quartet that would force the United States and the EU to play together on the one hand, and the United Nations and Russia on the other, is quite legitimate and, ideally, could put an end to the history of competing peace plans. However, the experience of previous years shows that such an idyll is practically unattainable due to the different political potential and authority of cosponsors. In fact, the contradictions between the mediators were transferred from the level of discussions in international organizations to the level of disputes within the Quartet, which inevitably leads to an internal imbalance in the mediation mechanism.

Added to this is the lack of a clear EU Middle East policy. Contradictions and conflicts of interest are observed both between the 15 member countries and between the Brussels supranational structures responsible for the sphere of foreign policy. The only component of a common platform that does not cause controversy is the need to form a "counterweight" to American hegemony in the international arena. However, this can hardly be considered sufficient grounds for claims to play an active role in Middle Eastern affairs. It is not entirely clear what European confidence in their own ability to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is based on, given their modest achievements in this area.

Through the prism of European news reports, official statements by politicians and public figures, and taking into account reports of growing anti-Semitic sentiment in Europe, Israelis tend to see it as a hostile opponent who fully accepted the Palestinian vision of the Middle East conflict, and not a neutral mediator interested solely in achieving peace. The EU policy on financing the PNA is criticized not only by Israel, but also by some EU members, since with significant amounts of financial assistance provided, there are no mechanisms to check what these funds are spent on.

Recently, the problems of the Middle East conflict in general, and the rights of the Palestinian people to self-determination, in particular, have become the main foreign policy topic for T. Blair and his government. At the same time, the British Foreign Office is making risky maneuvers, balancing between supporting American actions in Iraq, on the one hand, and declaring its desire for a fair resolution of the Palestinian problem, on the other. It is becoming increasingly clear that the right of the Palestinians to establish their own state has become the basis of British policy in the region.

The central element of the road map is the final cessation of Palestinian propaganda of hatred and violence and the establishment of an effective mechanism to prevent terror. It is quite obvious that this requires a radical restructuring of the Palestinian power apparatus, it will be necessary to deprive or limit the powers of a number of high-ranking politicians and the head of the PNA. Success in overcoming all these difficulties will largely depend on the situation in the Middle East as a whole.

Despite the fact that the "road map" raises more questions than it answers, talk about its official presentation, especially from the Europeans, is being conducted more and more actively. The fears boil down to the fact that any delay in the implementation of the intended goals will lead to the erosion of the US position, focused on supporting European steps in the Middle East.

Until recently, the US approach was to limit itself to reaffirming American interest in implementing the initiative jointly with other members of the Quartet, but at the same time postponing its official presentation until after the war in Iraq. However, K. Powell made a statement encouraging for his colleagues in the Quartet, in which he said that the United States considers it necessary to officially submit a "road map" to the conflicting parties with the completion of the formation of the Palestinian government. The Secretary of State also stressed that the text of the initiative will not be subject to significant revision.

But, despite this statement, some changes obviously cannot be avoided. In this regard, the different understanding of the status of the document by Israel and the Quartet attracts attention. The latter believes that the time to discuss the wording of the initiative is over and the time has come for their implementation. Israel expects to be given the opportunity to make its own amendments. Europeans accuse Israel that all its proposals to revise certain provisions of the initiative and introduce amendments are nothing more than a political game aimed at dragging out time in the hope that the plan will lose its relevance in the rapidly changing reality of the region and will be removed from the agenda. Israel, for its part, states that the amendments concern only fundamental issues related to the security sphere, and should be seen as an attempt at a constructive dialogue:

Israel pushes for a change in Palestinian leadership

A Palestinian state can be proclaimed only as a result of bilateral negotiations with Israel and after the conclusion of an appropriate agreement.

A detailed formulation of the Palestinian security obligations is needed, including the arrest, investigation and trial of suspected terrorists.

A Palestinian state can be proclaimed only after the final elimination of the terrorist infrastructure.

Guarantees are needed for the freedom of the IDF to carry out anti-terrorist operations in the territory under Palestinian control.

Israel would agree to a settlement freeze only on the condition of genuine peace and would not liquidate settlements in the interim.

The Palestinian authorities must recognize Israel as a Jewish state.

Thus, before the first official visit of Israel's Foreign Minister S. Shalom to the United States, there was a belief that the "road map" is a basis for discussion, and not a ready-made document. There was a certainty that a preliminary bilateral discussion of the initiative with the Americans would take place, mutual consultations would be held, during which an agreed version would be worked out, and only then would the publication and implementation of the initiative become a reality. The results of S. Shalom's visit turned out to be a surprise in many respects and revealed a disappointing reality.

It became clear that the Bush administration sees the war in Iraq as a kind of test of the strength of its position as a world superpower capable of carrying out its will without regard to other members of the international community. The goal of the American campaign is not only to change the regime in Iraq, but also to change the political reality in the Middle East as a whole. And Israel will have to fit into this new reality, adjusting its attitudes, possibly breaking traditional ideas and destroying stereotypes, which is unlikely to be painless. The second revelation was the US plans to formally present the road map to the parties within the next two weeks, with the expectation that they will have no more than two to three weeks to determine and state their position. After these "protocol" procedures, the United States will expect the real implementation of the peace initiative to begin, moreover, in compliance with the established deadlines. In the context of the ongoing events, is it necessary to say what a deliberate delay in the implementation of the deadlines or failure to fulfill the obligations assumed can lead to?

If the positions of the Europeans are inherently controversial, then no more so than the positions of the Palestinians themselves, since the new Palestinian head of government, Abu Mazen, is making every effort to delay the official presentation of the road map. Abu Mazen is afraid of receiving an immediate invitation to Washington for consultations on the implementation of the plan, and this, during the hostilities taking place in Iraq, can be assessed in the Arab world as aiding the American aggressor. For the same reason, Abu Mazen preferred to refuse official American congratulations on taking office and hints in every possible way that the invitation to Washington is undesirable, which the Europeans especially insist on, believing that this will increase the prestige and authority of the new prime minister in the eyes of the Palestinians and will help him to form the image of a political leader of international class, as well as to present him to the international public.

While there is active discussion about the timing of the publication of the initiative, I would like to recall that, as experience shows and as was the case with the Mitchell Report and the Tenet Plan, the publication of a peace initiative in itself does not necessarily lead to an immediate end to the confrontation and the start of negotiations between parties. The success or failure of the "road map" depends solely on the will of the direct participants in the conflict, their readiness to implement the agreements reached and renounce violence. This condition remains valid.

Now most analysts agree that the road map is already part of the history of Middle East peacekeeping, rich in a variety of peace plans and initiatives.

Thus, the next plan for the Palestinian-Israeli settlement was developed by an initiative group of functionaries of the Israeli governments of different years, headed by the former Minister of Justice Yossi Beilin, on the one hand, and Palestinian officials of various levels, headed by the former Minister of Information of the Palestinian Authority, Yasser Abed Rabbo. The development of the document, called the "Geneva Initiative", was carried out for about two years, after which a ceremony was held in Jordan that marked the end of the preparatory phase.

The new initiative, both in terms of its history of creation, and in terms of the wording in the text, and in terms of the style of presentation, very much resembles another one that appeared in 1992-1993, when the Israeli society was also confronted with the fact that secret negotiations with the Palestinians took place in Oslo and achieved there agreements. Then Yossi Beilin served as Deputy Foreign Minister in the government of Yitzhak Rabin, which, however, did not prevent him from exceeding his authority and sending emissaries to negotiate with the PLO without Rabin's consent. When intelligence informed the prime minister of these contacts, he was surprised and angry, as at the same time, and on his behalf, Elyakim Rubinstein conducted official negotiations with the Palestinians in Washington. The end of this story is well known: Beilin, with the support of Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, succeeded in persuading Rabin to sign the now discredited Oslo Accords.

2 Prospects for constructive dialogue to prevent escalation of tension and resolve the conflict

Peace settlement conflict can be achieved, Dmitriev E. believes. He writes about this that as a result of the war of the United States against Iraq and the occupation of the territory of this country by the troops of the US-British coalition and their allies, a significant new extension of the American zone Russian military presence in the Middle East. Now this zone stretches from the borders of Afghanistan and the former Soviet republics of Central Asia, the Caucasus-Persian Gulf to the borders of Syria. In military-strategic terms, a number of Arab states of the Middle East - Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Saudi Arabia - found themselves, as it were, in the grip of two strategic allies - the United States. Comrade and Israel: in the south - with a hundred the crowns of the American army occupying Iraq and controlling the Persian Gulf.

What are the prospects for a political settlement of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict in the light of the new geopolitical situation in the Middle East region, according to E. Dmitriev. In Washington, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Mahmoud Abbas /Abu Mazen/, then Secretary General of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), in the presence of representatives of the cosponsors of the Madrid Conference, the United States and Russia, signed the joint local document: "Declaration of Principles on Provisional Arrangements for the Organization of Self-Government", referred to above.

Further Palestinian-Israeli negotiations thieves and signing a number so on called intermediates agreements (Cairo - 1994, Taba -1995, etc.) should have lead to a transitional conclusion period (by April 1999) and the achievement of a mutual agreement final retirement tus of Palestinian statehood.

However, by this date, the parties failed to reach such an agreement, the negotiations were interrupted due to disagreements on a number of fundamental issues: the territorial delimitation between Israel and the future Palestinian state, the status of Jerusalem, the fate of Jewish settlements, the return of Palestinian refugees to their homes. At the end of April 1999, the Palestinian leadership, taking into account the parliamentary elections in Israel in May 1999, as well as the opinion of the co-sponsors of the peace process in the Middle East - the United States and Russia, decided to postpone the proclamation of the Palestinian sky state for a later period.

In June 1999, as a result of parliamentary elections in Israel, the government of Ehud Barak came to power, which managed to somewhat revive the deadlocked peace process. A little later, on September 5, 1999, in the Egyptian city of Sharm el-Sheikh, signed Palestinian-Israeli Memorandum on a phased creation of obligations of the parties under previously signed ones, but not you complete agreements, as well as about the resumption of negotiations on the final status of the Palestinian territories. Such negotiations were indeed resumed at the meeting of E. Barak and Y. Arafat, which took place on the initiative and patronage of the American President Clinton in July 2000 at Camp David. When discussing at this meeting the problem of the "final status" of the Palestinian territories, the government of E. Barak agreed with the transfer of up to 90% of the territory to the control of the future Palestinian state in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, while maintaining Israel Lem large Jewish settlements in the West Bank.

During the Palestinian-Israeli talks at Camp David, there has also been some progress towards rapprochement of the positions of the parties on issues of the status of Jerusalem, the fate of Palestinian refugees and Jewish settlements. But nevertheless, finally, the disagreements between the representatives of Israel and the PLO at these negotiations, first of all, regarding the scheme of territorial division between Israel and the Palestinians and with respect to Jerusalem, then the actions of the opponents could not be overcome. for a peaceful settlement of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, especially among the Israeli settlers. The latter accused the government of E. Barak of allegedly too large "concessions" from Israel to the Palestinians. At the same time, the protests of the Arab population of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip against the continued Israeli occupation multiplied. Moreover, these speeches were often accompanied by acts of violence: shelling of Jewish settlements, explosions in places of concentration niya people and other actions, committed for the most part militants from radical Islamic groups extra mystical - Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

The intensity of passions increased even more after an unexpected march on September 28, 2001 by a group of deputies of the Israeli parliament from the opposition parties of the right-wing Likud bloc, led by General A. Sharon, to the Temple Mount located in the Arab eastern part of Jerusalem, within the limits of the shrine of all Muslims - the Al Mosque - Aksa. Muslims throughout the Arab and Islamic world regarded this move as direct - a blow to religious feelings, as a provocation aimed at undermining the peace process, in order to prevent the creation of a new Palestinian state. state with Jerusalem as its capital. The very next day - September 29, 2001 - the indignation of Muslims who came to Friday prayer at the Al-Aqsa Mosque, turned into a spontaneous uprising, soon spreading necking all over the territory Riya Palestine Av tonomy. started but new round of the Palestinian intifada, known as the al-Aqsa Intifada.

In February 2001, in an extremely electrifying situation associated with the uprising of the Palestinian population in the occupied territories, snap elections to the Knesset (parliament) were held in Israel. They brought victory to the Likud bloc. On February 26, 2001, the leader of this bloc, Ariel Sharon, was elected the new prime minister of Israel.

From now on I dominate Armed confrontation has again become a common feature in the relationship between Palestinians and Israelis. All of Palestine, including the territory of Israel and the Palestinian Authority, was swept by a wave of violence and bloodshed. Moreover, if the acts of violence on the part of the Palestinians - explosions on military and civilian facilities, attacks on Jewish settlers, etc. were in most cases the work of individual supporters of the Hamas movement and Islamic Jihad, not controlled by the authorities of the Palestinian Authority, then with a hundred On the Israeli side, they were in the nature of armed operations of the Israeli army and police authorized and planned by the Israeli government, aimed at destroying not only individual leaders of extremist groups, but also official institutions and figures of the administration of the Palestinian Authority.

This is evidenced by such facts as the practice of periodic incursions of the Israeli army into the territory of the Autonomy under the pretext of the need to destroy "terrorists", for example, the occupation in April 2001 of part of the territory of the Gaza Strip in the areas of the cities of Rafah and Khan Yunis, where the camps of Palestinian refugees and the subsequent repeated incursions of the Israeli army into these areas in 2003-2005, the destruction by Israeli aircraft of the international airport and seaport in Gaza, the shelling of houses and other civilian objects in Gaza and in cities in the West Bank - Jenin, Ramallah, the capture of Palestinian police checkpoints, blockade of the headquarters of the head of the Palestinian Autonomy Yasser Aafat in Ramallah, prohibition of the movement of Palestinians from the territory of the Autonomy to Israel il, so-called construction my "barrier wall" separating part of the occupied territory of Autonomy - the West Bank and Gaza from Israel. The culmination of the armed confrontation between the Israelis and the Palestinians in 2002-2003, when suicide attacks by suicide bombers from the Islamic organizations Hamas and Islamic Jihad, on the one hand, and the so-called "retaliatory actions" of the Israeli army, on the other, became especially frequent and violent. character. At the same time, the main victims of the confrontation were the civilian population.

As reported in a note dated August 4, 2003, by the Permanent Representative of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan to the UN addressed to the Secretary-General, more than 2,800 Palestinians and more than 800 Israelis were killed and thousands of people were injured between September 2000 and July 2006 alone. “Most of the victims in Israel were caused by terrorist attacks against Israelis by various Palestinian terrorist groups.” At the same time, a large number of Palestinian civilian casualties settlements was the result of Israeli military operations, including pre-emptive strikes and the practice of targeted killings of persons suspected of terrorist activities in Palestinian areas.” In a number of Palestinian cities, entire residential areas were destroyed as a result of clashes between the Israeli army and Palestinian militants. The city of Rafah in the south of the Gaza Strip was particularly affected. During the incursion of the Israeli army into the area of ​​Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahiya in the part of the Gaza Strip in May-June 2003, more than a thousand dunams of agricultural farmland and houses and infrastructure were destroyed or damaged.

According to the Israeli intelligence services, 1,034 Israelis and ca and about 5600 people received whether injured. The Palestinians carried out 138 suicide attacks, eight of which were committed by women. At the same time, according to Noam Hofsteter, spokesman for the Israeli human rights organization B'Tselem, 3,160 Palestinians have died over the years. In addition, the Israeli army destroyed more than 4,800 Palestinian homes.

So what do we have today. Many ways out of the conflict were proposed by the UN, members of the "quartet": the famous, but ineffectual resolutions No. 242, 338, 1397, 1515; the principle of "land in exchange for peace"; the Roadmap - in fact, exist only on paper. Each new series of peace talks was interrupted by yet another terrorist attacks, explosions, rocket attacks, and provocations. In fact, all the efforts and achievements of the UN were nullified by the aggressive actions of the Palestinians and Israelis. It turns out a "vicious circle". Is there a way out of this circle?

The Palestinian-Israeli conflict can be viewed in the short and long term.

The main task to be solved in the near future is to "seat" the parties to the negotiating table. To do this, it is necessary to persuade or force Israel to limit settlement construction in the occupied territories, since this is the main obstacle in the establishment of relations, and, I emphasize, an obstacle not to reach a compromise, but only to resume the negotiation process as such.

If we consider the issue in the long term, then here we are talking about ways to finally resolve the conflict. And here I cannot agree with the opinion of Vitaliy Naumkin, a well-known Russian scientist: “Today it is time to quickly recognize the existence of a Palestinian state, with temporary borders for a transitional period…”. The scientist believes that such a measure would stop the path to the creation of new settlements. However, I believe that, firstly, Mahmoud Abbas will not agree to such an option, and, secondly, the implementation of such a plan threatens to further delay the negotiation process, because the key issue of borders, the eternal "stumbling block", remains unresolved. And I strongly doubt that settlement construction will be stopped: now the scale of construction is only growing, despite the condemnation of Israeli policy by the entire world community, including the United States.

I see the following compromise option: it is obvious that concessions will have to be made by both sides.

The most painful issue is the issue of the status of the city of Jerusalem. Its unresolved nature makes the negotiations on the remaining controversial points meaningless. But if the Palestinians claim only East Jerusalem, then the Israeli government considers Jerusalem as a whole "as the eternal and indivisible capital" of Israel, so the issue of East Jerusalem is taken out of the scope of negotiations. Then what kind of Palestinian state can we talk about if the entire Islamic world, even if only due to religious ideas and values, cannot give Jerusalem to the Jews? Plans have long been made for the division of Jerusalem. The most realistic of them, in my opinion, is a plan according to which East Jerusalem will become the capital of the future Palestinian state, West - the state of Israel, and the territory in the ancient part of the city, where the shrines of three world religions are located, should be given a special status that already exists behind the scenes (“City of Peace”) and placed under the control of the international community. I think it is obvious to everyone that the ancient city will have to be divided, which means that Israel will have to give in on this issue.

As for the “eternal” demand of the Palestinians for the return of refugees who left the territory occupied by Israel, on this issue I agree with the point of view of Vitaly Naumkin, who noted that “here the Arabs will have to make concessions.” The Israeli leadership does not want to accept refugees, and the Israelis can be understood. The status of "Palestinian refugee" is hereditary. It is worth considering this fact and the fact that more than 60 years have passed since the adoption of UNGA resolution No. 194 (III), calling for the return of refugees. Clearly, the number of refugees has increased exponentially: there are currently about 5 million Palestinian refugees registered with the UN, and Israel's population is 7.933 million as of September 2012. Israel, accepting refugees, will turn into an Arab state. In addition, the refugees themselves grew up in special camps and were brought up in a spirit of hatred towards Jews. Therefore, the fears of the Jews and the demands of the Israeli government to recognize Israel as a "Jewish state" are quite logical and justified. So, the refugee problem must be solved in favor of Israel.

No less controversial is the problem of borders: the Palestinians demand a return to the borders that existed before the 1967 war, referring to UN resolution No. 242, and consider it possible to transfer no more than 4% of the territory of the West Bank of the Jordan River (WBRI) to the Israelis. Israel, on the other hand, demands to annex to itself all the territories on which Jewish settlements are built - and this is more than 6% of its territory, and also wants to retain control over the Jordan Valley, along which the border of the ZBRI with Jordan passes. How to regard the condition of Israel? I believe this paragraph is a direct violation of the sovereignty of a state that has not yet been created. The parties should agree on the figure - 6%, in favor of Israel. However, if we are talking about the creation of an independent Palestinian state, then it is logical and fair, in my opinion, to make the control and protection of future territorial borders the prerogative of the Palestinian administration.

No less important is the condition for achieving "inter-Palestinian agreement". In fact, today Palestine is still divided into supporters, if not opposing, then having ideological differences, political forces - Fatah and Hamas. Yes, in May 2011 in Cairo, these Palestinian movements "agreed" on reconciliation. However, the agreement was halted due to disagreements over the formation of the PNA cabinet. In January of this year, Fatah and Hamas agreed to unfreeze the process of inter-Palestinian reconciliation. Steps are being taken towards achieving internal political unity in Palestine. Otherwise, with whom is Israel to negotiate? With Mahmoud Abbas, and the area of ​​the Gaza Strip should be ignored? So, the solution of domestic political problems is the primary task of the Palestinians. But, there is also the other side of the coin - the reaction of Israel, which is clearly illustrated by Benjamin Netanyahu's statement made in April 2011: "Mahmoud Abbas must choose - peace with Israel or peace with Hamas", which is easily explained. What is the Hamas movement? This is a fundamentalist Islamic movement, recognized as terrorist by most countries, including Israel. This is a movement that has not yet recognized the State of Israel, which not only does not seek peace with Israel, but proclaims its task to be the fight against Israel. Vitaly Naumkin believes that "this movement should be recognized as a legal political force." I believe that this is impossible until Hamas reconsiders its ideology and refuses to fight against Israel.

Thus, there are many controversial, controversial issues. Still, I don't think the situation is hopeless. If the parties agree to make mutual concessions, if they pursue a more flexible policy towards each other, then peace is possible. At the moment, based on all of the above, I can conclude that a tougher, uncompromising position has been taken by Israel, which, instead of taking steps towards peace, is only adding fuel to the fire. And I mean not only active settlement construction. To give a few examples: On February 24, 2010, the Israeli Prime Minister announced the inclusion of two holy sites located on the West Bank of the Jordan River in the list of heritage sites of the Jewish people; On 14 April 2010, a law was passed that would allow troops occupying the West Bank to evict Palestinians from the West Bank without recourse to a civil court; On May 4, 2011, information appeared that the Israeli government had refrained from transferring $100 million in taxes to the Palestinians. In addition, according to the estimates of the human rights organization Shalom Ahshav, Israeli settlement activity in the occupied territories reached a record high in 2012. These and other points complicate an already complicated negotiation process.

How to incline the parties to peace? What can force Israel to make concessions? Of course, the strength of US-Israeli relations directly affects the course of the negotiation process. US Deputy Secretary of State for the Middle East Harold Saunders said in an interview with RIA Novosti: “The American side has long had interests related to the Middle East ... We used to be very interested in oil from Arab countries, but at the same time we have strong relations with Israel, and these interests conflict with each other. Peace in the Middle East is important to the US because it reduces the potential threat of unrest that threatens US interests…” Harold Saunders does not doubt the success of the United States as a mediator, since "no other country has such close relations with Israel ...". However, in modern conditions, this active intermediary activity does not bring positive results. We all remember the already famous "Middle East speech" by US President Barack Obama (May 2011), in which he proposed a basis for future negotiations: "The United States is confident that the negotiations should end with the implementation of the principle of two states with the creation of permanent borders along the lines of 1967 ..." . One could consider this statement an incredible breakthrough, but Obama noted in his conclusion that "the United States stands for a demilitarized Palestinian state, since the Jewish state must be provided with security ...". The demilitarization clause again limits the sovereignty of the Palestinian state. This speech vividly reflects the inconsistency of US policy in the Middle East, which is forced to maneuver between the interests of Israel and the interests of the Arabs. On one side of the scale is the pro-Israeli lobby, whose support cannot be lost, because it is a significant part of the US electorate, on the other hand, American interests in the Middle East, which are more difficult to ensure against the backdrop of the Arab revolutions, and every step in support of the Israelis can further antagonize the Arab world . Today, judging by the “success” of the Palestinian-Israeli peace process, the priority task for the United States is to provide support for the pro-Israeli lobby. That is why the current American administration, condemning Israeli settlement construction, blocks the relevant UN resolutions, and on the eve of Mahmoud Abbas's application to the UN for membership in the organization, Obama warned more than once that he would certainly use the right of veto if necessary. As for the fact that Palestine, by decision of the UN Security Council, received the status of an observer state in the UN, in the United States it is perceived as a counterproductive measure: in order to gain statehood, the Palestinians first need to achieve agreement in negotiations with Israel.

The Middle East problem is complex, multifaceted and needs to be resolved as soon as possible, since the prolongation of the conflict only adds new contentious issues, which are already in short supply. Settlement construction is expanding, and hence the territories that Israel will seek to secure. The only thing that can move the solution of the problem off the ground and start the peace negotiation process again is a change in US policy in the Middle East: verbal demonstrations of support for the Palestinians and condemnation of the actions of the Israeli leadership must be accompanied by real measures of pressure on Israel, which the entire Arab world is waiting for.

Conclusion

Ethnic conflicts are one of the oldest forms of social interaction, the motivational side of which is somehow colored by ethnic feelings, affecting the deep structures of the human personality. Ethnic conflicts become especially acute when they are caused by territorial claims.

A significant part of the conceptual structures of the nature of ethnic conflict consider power and politics as potential or actual components of conflict relations. This is no coincidence. An ethno-political conflict is a certain type, or rather, a certain stage in the development of an ethnic conflict, at which it acquires a political direction and organization. Political in an ethnic conflict means the transition of conflict relations to a higher level of complexity, which is associated with consciously formulated goals aimed at the redistribution of power.

The conducted research confirms that one can speak of an ethno-political conflict when the parties to the conflict, divided along ethnic lines, have a political leadership that pursues certain goals and objectives of a political nature. Both logic and practice show that most inter-ethnic conflicts take on this form over time.

The beginning of the Arab-Israeli conflict in modern history was UN Resolution 181 (II) on the formation of an Israeli state on the lands of Palestine inhabited by Arabs.

An analysis of the recommendations set forth in this document shows that the positions and interests of one of the parties to the potential conflict were not taken into account when it was adopted. All Arab countries and the Supreme Arab Committee of Palestine rejected the decision to organize a Jewish state on the territory of Palestine. And this meant that UN Resolution 181 (II) itself already contained a conflict basis, which was confirmed by subsequent events. The experience of conflict situations convinces us that a decision is considered correct only if its mechanism is not only institutionalized, but has a social status that allows it to influence social processes. And this requires a common understanding of the very structure of the definition of an acceptable solution.

The logic of conflict relations dictates the inevitable consequences: ignoring the interests of one of the parties creates problems for the other. The New State of Israel was surrounded by hostile Arab countries, which were not slow to declare war on the new state, deciding to correct the situation by force.

The subsequent decades of war, terror, intifada repeatedly forced the leaders of the conflicting parties to sit down at the negotiating table and resolve mutual claims peacefully. But the incompatible interests and contradictions of the parties again led to war and terror. Today it is impossible to offer an unambiguous recipe for a solution to the conflict that is satisfactory for both sides. Only one thing is clear: in any case, both peoples will always live in the long-suffering land of Palestine. Neither expel nor destroy each other, they are not able to.

The analysis of the Arab-Israeli conflict carried out in the work places certain hopes on the factors for achieving peace and harmony in the region. The spontaneous development of events is not able to overcome the age-old claims and mistrust of Arabs and Jews towards each other. In the near future, a relatively peaceful coexistence of two states on the land of Palestine is possible with a constructive influence on the development of events on the part of the world community. France sees the only solution to the crisis in sending international forces to the Middle East to separate the warring parties. The issue of their deployment in the conflict zone was discussed by the leadership of Saudi Arabia. The demarche of Paris was highly appreciated by the Arabs. However, Israel until recently categorically rejected the possibility of "internationalization of the crisis."

The peacekeeping efforts of major international powers are undoubtedly a real factor in the development of the Arab-Israeli conflict. However, the influence of this factor is far from clear. Each country interested in resolving the conflict in the Middle East is interested in it in its own way. An authoritative international organization such as the UN could truly rise above the selfishness of private interests, but, unfortunately, its possibilities are limited. They are limited both in terms of resources and in terms of political independence and freedom by certain centers of influence and power.

Mankind has entered the 21st century with an understanding of the fundamental impossibility of getting rid of conflicts, which pushes sovereign states to build their policies on the priority of national interests and the creation of appropriate resources. However, the militarization of the national economy, as history testifies, does not bring anything positive to human existence, on the contrary, it brings impoverishment, primitiveness to him, deprives him of the joy of existence and saps his mental potential. Therefore, the concept of military superiority in conflicts cannot objectively become a symbol of the prosperity of mankind, because it potentially brings about the extinction of the human race.

The course of the process of the Middle East settlement shows that the positions of the main political groups participating in this process were strongly influenced by internal political events in Israel and Palestine, along with other factors, in particular foreign policy and economic. This had a strong impact on the preparation of the negotiation process, as well as on the positions of the Palestinian and Israeli sides during the negotiations and the subsequent course of the peace process.

The Palestinian-Israeli conflict is a clash of two territorial entities, ethnic communities for the right to create their own monocultural country and its universal recognition. Taking into account the contradictions that have arisen historically, three forms of relations between the parties to the conflict can be distinguished: a strong peace, an open large-scale war, an intermediate state characterized by outbreaks of struggle and short-term attempts to bring the warring parties closer to resolve differences.

An open large-scale war involving a significant number of forces from both sides, aimed at the final resolution of contradictions, is a theoretically possible phenomenon, but in practice such an outcome of events seems unlikely. Firstly, because in addition to the direct participants, other countries are also involved in the sphere of confrontation, both occupying the border area and located at a considerable distance from it. Secondly, at present, for an open large-scale action against Israel, the Palestinian Authority does not have a sufficient degree of consolidation of forces. Thirdly, the very goal of a final resolution of contradictions looks unattainable.

The second theoretically possible option for resolving the conflict is the creation of a strong peace, which is significantly hampered by the unwillingness of the Arab political elite to compromise in any form. In such situations, the conclusion of peace for a long time is achieved either by the complete exhaustion of the forces of both sides, which, with the modern international one, incl. the financial support of both countries seems unlikely, or the destruction of one of the participants in the conflict, which again is impossible in the foreseeable future for a number of reasons.

The Palestinians and Israelis are doomed to live on the same land, but they must divide the territory, which will require a series of concessions and compromises. The Road Map documents, the Oslo Accords, the Declaration of Principles by Sari Nusseiba and Ami Ayalon, the Geneva Agreement have a number of significant shortcomings and do not solve four key problems: the dispute over territories; the future of Jewish settlements (largely a consequence of the issue of territories); the fate of the Palestinian refugees and their descendants; the question of the religious shrines of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, incl. the question of the status of Jerusalem. Currently, there is a transformation of the ideological conflict between the "secular nationalists" from Fatah and the "Islamic radicals" from Hamas into an armed confrontation between various tribalist, communal-clan and religious-sectarian groups that make up the local Arab-Palestinian society. The experiment of rapidly consolidating these groups of diverse origins into something remotely resembling a single community has failed, there is no "Palestinian nation". This implies the impossibility of the emergence in the Palestinian territories in the foreseeable future of a relatively stable regime with which it would be possible to conduct a dialogue according to the “peace in exchange for territories” scheme, and Israel is unlikely to be able to separate from the Palestinian Arabs in one form or another.

Palestinian-Israeli relations are doomed to exist between strong peace and open large-scale war. And in this regard, the Russian Federation should play an increasingly active role in the Quartet, which includes the United States, the United Nations and the European Union and was created to resolve this particular conflict. Achieving the stated goal is in Russia's national interests.

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Arab-Israeli conflict

The Arab-Israeli conflict is a confrontation between a number of Arab countries, as well as Arab paramilitary radical groups supported by part of the indigenous Arab population of Israeli-controlled (occupied) Palestinian territories, on the one hand, and the Zionist movement, and then the State of Israel, on the other. Although the State of Israel was only created in 1948, the actual history of the conflict spans about a century, starting in the late 19th century, when the political Zionist movement was created, which marked the beginning of the Jewish struggle for their own state.

Arab countries (Lebanon, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Egypt, Iraq and other Arab countries) and the Jewish state of Israel have participated and are participating in the conflict. During the conflicts, many armistice agreements were concluded between different countries, but the conflict still continued and every year it becomes more and more aggressive and more aggressive on the part of the Jews and the Arabs. There are more and more reasons for war and goals in it. But the most important goal of the Arabs is the creation of a sovereign state in Palestine, which was to be created after the UN resolution of November 29, 1947.

Within the framework of the large-scale Arab-Israeli conflict, it is customary to single out the regional Palestinian-Israeli conflict, which is primarily due to the clash of the territorial interests of Israel and the indigenous Arab population of Palestine. In recent years, this conflict has been a source of political tension and open armed clashes in the region.

Causes of the conflict

Determining the complex of causes that gave rise to the conflict, it is necessary to note the following:

Historical-territorial (claims of Palestinian Arabs and Jews to the same land and different interpretations the history of these territories);

Religious (the existence of common or closely spaced shrines);

Economic (blockade of strategic trade routes);

International legal (non-compliance by the parties with the decisions of the UN and other international organizations);

International-political (at different stages they manifested themselves in the interest of various world centers of power in catalysing the conflict).

Historical roots of the conflict

Arab-Israeli conflict

Historical roots of the conflict

Palestine is a territory with an ancient history. Around the 11th century BC. Hebrew tribes began to penetrate into the territory of Palestine, creating their own states here (Israel and Judah). Later, Palestine was part of the states of the Achaemenids, Alexander the Great, the Ptolemies and the Seleucids, was a province of Rome and Byzantium. Under the Romans, the persecuted Jewish population was dispersed to other countries of the Mediterranean region, and partly assimilated with the local Christian population. In 638 Palestine was conquered by the Arabs, it became one of the provinces of the caliphate called al-Falastin. It was during this period that the territory of the country began to be settled by Arab fellah peasants. Muslim domination in Palestine lasted almost 1000 years. In 1260-1516. Palestine is a province of Egypt. Since 1516, this territory was part of the Ottoman Empire, being part of either the Damascus vilayet or the Beirut vilayet. Since 1874, the Jerusalem region has been allocated in the Ottoman Empire, which is controlled directly from Istanbul. In 1917, during the First World War, Palestine was occupied by British troops and became (from 1920 to 1947) a British mandated territory. At the beginning of the XX century. Palestine began to be perceived by international Jewish circles, organized at the first Zionist congress in Basel in 1897, as the center of Jewish statehood. The Zionist organization began to take practical steps towards the Jewishization of the country. During this period, the construction of Jewish cities and settlements was underway (cities such as Tel Aviv - 1909, Ramat Gan - 1921, Herzliya / Herzliya / - 1924, Natanya - 1929 were created), the flow of Jewish immigrants from Europe, America, Asia, Africa. In Palestine, already largely overpopulated, lacking free land and water resources, conflicts began to flare up between the Arabs, who had taken root here almost one and a half thousand years ago, and the arriving Jews.

For the first time, the idea of ​​creating separate Arab and Jewish states in Palestine arose in the 30s. In 1937, a British Royal Commission proposed a plan to divide the mandated territory into three parts. The first, covering the territory of northern Palestine, including Galilee and part of the coastal strip, was intended for the Jewish state. The second sector, which occupied Samaria, the Negev, southern part the right bank of the Jordan, as well as the cities of Tel Aviv and Jaffa, territorially separated from them, was supposed to serve to create an Arab state. Finally, the third sector, according to the commission's plans, was to remain under the neutral mandate of Great Britain. This sector, along with the Judean Mountains, which have an important strategic position, included the shrines of Muslim, Jewish and Christian culture: Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Nazareth. The implementation of this plan was prevented by the outbreak of the Second World War. After the end of the World War, the question of the partition of Palestine was revived. Jewish organizations reminded of the horrors of the Holocaust and demanded the immediate establishment of the State of Israel. The scheme for the partition of Palestine, proposed by the UN in 1947, was very different from the plans for the pre-war political reorganization of the region. According to Resolution No. 181 of the UN General Assembly, the Jewish state significantly increased its area at the expense of the Arab territories in the south. From the neutral international zone, under which it was originally supposed to allocate 1/10 of the territory of Palestine, there was only a small enclave that included Jerusalem and Bethlehem with the nearest suburbs. This territory was to be administered by the UN administration with the help of a special elected body and be completely demilitarized. The planned territory of the Jewish state included three, and the Arab - four unconnected sections of the territory. The UN resolution violated ethnic parity. The territory of the Jewish state, due to the desert spaces of the Negev, turned out to be larger than the Arab one, which did not correspond to the ethnic picture of post-war Palestine: in 1946, there were only 678 thousand Jews for 1269 thousand Arabs.

In Palestine, only a Jewish state was created - Israel (1948). Peaceful coexistence on the same land of two states hostile to each other with different religious and cultural foundations, with vaguely defined artificial borders, was impossible.

This one of the longest regional conflicts of our time has been going on for more than 60 years. In general, the history of the conflict can be divided into several key stages: the Arab-Israeli war of 1948 (the first war), the Suez crisis of 1956 (the second war), the Arab-Israeli wars of 1967 and 1973. (Arab-Israeli Wars 3 and 4), Camp David Peace Process 1978-79, Lebanon War 1982 (fifth war), Peace Process 1990s (Camp David Accords 2000) and The intifada of 2000, which began on September 29, 2000 and is often referred to by experts as the "sixth war" or "war of attrition".

The first war broke out immediately after the declaration on May 14, 1948, of the independence of the State of Israel. The armed contingents of five Arab countries: Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon occupied a number of territories in the southern and eastern parts of Palestine, reserved by UN decisions for an Arab state. Then the Jewish quarter in Old Jerusalem was occupied by the Arabs. The Israelis, meanwhile, took control of the strategically important road leading from the coast to Jerusalem, passing through the Judean mountains. By the beginning of 1949, the armed formations managed to occupy the Negev up to the former Egyptian-Palestinian border, with the exception of the narrow coastal strip of the Gaza Strip; this strip remained under Egyptian control, and it is this strip that is now commonly referred to as the Gaza Strip, although, according to a 1947 UN decision, the Arab Gaza Strip should be much larger in area. The Jordanian army managed to gain a foothold in the West Bank of the Jordan and in East Jerusalem. The part of the West Bank occupied by the Jordanian army began to be considered as part of the Jordanian state. Negotiations in February-July 1949, which led to a truce between Israel and the Arab countries, fixed the temporary border between the opposing sides on the lines of combat contact between troops in early 1949.

The second war broke out seven years later. Under the pretext of protecting the Suez Canal, nationalized by the Egyptian government, hitherto owned by European companies, Israel sent its troops to the Sinai Peninsula. Five days after the start of the conflict, Israeli tank columns captured the Gaza Strip, or rather, what was left of it for the Arabs after 1948-1949, occupied most of the Sinai and reached the Suez Canal. In December, following a joint Anglo-French intervention against Egypt, UN troops were deployed in the conflict area. Israeli forces left the Sinai and the Gaza Strip in March 1957.

The third war, called the Six-Day War for its short duration, took place from June 5 to June 10, 1967. The reason for it was the intensification of the bombing of Israeli military facilities by Syrian aircraft in early 1967. During the Six-Day War, Israel practically destroyed the Egyptian air force and established its own hegemony in the air. The war cost the Arabs the loss of control over East Jerusalem, the loss of the West Bank of the Jordan River, the Gaza Strip, the Sinai and the Golan Heights on the Israeli-Syrian border.

The periodic armed clashes that followed the Six Day War were replaced by a new escalation of the conflict on October 6, 1973. On the day of the Jewish religious holiday Yom Kippur, Israeli army units were attacked by Egypt in the Suez Canal area. The Israelis managed to break into the territory of Syria and surround the Egyptian Third Army there. Another strategic success of Tel Aviv was the crossing of the Suez Canal and the establishment of its presence on its western bank. Israel and Egypt signed an armistice agreement in November, which was confirmed on January 18, 1974 by peace agreements. These documents provided for the withdrawal of Israeli forces from Sinai to the west of the Mitla and Gidi passes in exchange for a reduction in the Egyptian military presence in the Suez Canal zone. A UN peacekeeping force was deployed between the two opposing armies.

On March 26, 1979, Israel and Egypt signed a peace treaty at Camp David (USA), which ended the state of war that had existed between the two countries for 30 years. Under the Camp David Accords, Israel returned the entire Sinai Peninsula to Egypt, and Egypt recognized Israel's right to exist. The two states established diplomatic relations with each other. The Camp David Accords cost Egypt its expulsion from the Organization of the Islamic Conference and the Arab League, and its President Anwar Sadat his life.

On June 5, 1982, tensions escalated between Israelis and Palestinians who had taken refuge in Lebanese territory. It resulted in the fifth Arab-Israeli war, during which Israel bombed Beirut and areas of southern Lebanon, where the camps of militants of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) were concentrated. By June 14 ground troops Israel went deep into Lebanon to the outskirts of Beirut, which was surrounded by them. After a massive Israeli shelling of West Beirut, the PLO evacuated its armed formations from the city. Israeli troops left West Beirut and most of Lebanon by June 1985. Only a small area in southern Lebanon remained under Israeli control. On the night of May 23-24, 2000, under pressure from international peacekeeping organizations and taking into account the opinion of its citizens, who did not want to pay with the lives of soldiers for their military presence on foreign territory, Israel completely withdrew its troops from southern Lebanon.

At the end of the 1980s, there were real prospects for a peaceful way out of the protracted Middle East conflict. The Palestinian popular uprising (intifada) that broke out in the occupied territories in December 1987 forced the Israeli authorities to seek a compromise. On July 31, 1988, King Hussein of Jordan announced the termination of the administrative and other ties of his country with the West Bank of the Jordan, and in November 1988, the independence of the State of Palestine was proclaimed. In September 1993, with the mediation of the United States and Russia, a declaration was signed in Washington, opening up new ways to resolve the crisis. In this document, Israel agreed to the organization of a Palestinian national autonomy (but not a state), and the PLO recognized Israel's right to exist. In accordance with the Washington Declaration, in May 1994, an agreement was signed on the gradual introduction of Palestinian self-government in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip during a five-year transitional period (initially in the Gaza Strip and the city of Ariha / Jericho / in the West Bank). In the next period of time, the territory on which the jurisdiction of the PNA began to be exercised gradually expanded. In May 1999, when the term of the PNA's temporary status expired, the Palestinians tried a second time - and already on more serious grounds - to declare their independence, but were forced to abandon this decisive step under pressure from the world community.

Overall, the five Arab-Israeli wars have demonstrated that neither side can decisively defeat the other. This was largely due to the involvement of the parties to the conflict in the global confrontation during the Cold War. The situation in terms of conflict resolution changed qualitatively with the collapse of the USSR and the disappearance of the bipolar world.

Changes in the world led to the fact that the Arab-Israeli confrontation left the system of the global confrontation between the USSR and the USA. In the process of resolving the conflict, significant positive changes were identified, which, in particular, were evidenced by the Palestinian-Israeli agreements in Oslo in 1992 (the main point of which is the gradual transfer by Israel of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip to self-government by Palestinian representatives), the Jordanian-Israeli peace treaty 1994, Syrian-Israeli peace talks 1992-1995 etc.

On the whole, the end of the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s were marked by cardinal changes in the process of the peaceful settlement of the Middle East conflict. The "crown" of the whole process was the recognition by Israel of the PLO as a representative of the Palestinian people, as well as the exclusion from the "Palestinian Charter" of a clause denying Israel's right to exist.

However, starting from mid-1996, the dynamics of the negotiation process and Palestinian-Israeli relations changed for the worse. This was due to internal political changes in Israel, the problems of building a Palestinian state. At the same time, the culminating moment of this period was the visit in September 2000 of the leader of the opposition right-wing Likud party, Ariel Sharon, to Jerusalem, where he made a provocative statement in which he stated that he "would use all democratic means to prevent the division of Jerusalem", in response to Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, who proposed dividing Jerusalem into two parts Western - Israeli and Eastern - Arab. With this provocative speech, the Intifada-2000 began, which marked the beginning of the modern Middle East crisis.

Positions of the parties

The position of the supporters of Israel

The Zionist movement, on the basis of which the state of Israel was created, sees in Palestine the historical homeland of the Jewish people, and proceeds from the assertion that this people has the right to its own sovereign state. This statement is based on several basic principles:

The principle of the equality of peoples: like other peoples who have their own sovereign state, Jews also have the right to live in their country and govern it.

The principle of the need to protect the Jews from anti-Semitism : a phenomenon of anti-Semitism culminating in a targeted genocide against Jews ( Holocaust), carried out Nazi Germany in the first half 1940s years, forces the Jews to organize in self-defense and find a territory that would serve as a refuge in the event of a repeat of the disaster. This is only possible with the creation of a Jewish state.

The principle of the historical homeland: as shown by numerous anthropological and archaeological studies, in Palestine, starting from 13th century BC e. Jewish tribes lived from the 11th to the 6th century BC. e. there were Jewish states. The predominant presence of Jews in this territory continued after the conquest of the last Jewish state of antiquity, Judah, by the Babylonian king.Nebuchadnezzar II , over the next centuries with the successive transfer of lands from hand to hand, and up to the uprising Bar Kochba in 132 n. e., after which a significant number of Jews were expelled by the Romans from the country. But even after this exile, until the 5th century A.D. e. Jewish majority in Galilee . In Judaism, this territory is called "Eretz Yisrael", which means "Land of Israel". It was promised to Jacob (Israel) by God as the Promised Land, which He intended for the Jews. Since the emergence of the Jewish people, one of the fundamental and preached ideas of Judaism has been the connection of this people with the land of Israel.

A group of public organizations representing the interests of Jews,expelled from Arab countries in the 1948-1970s, whose descendants make up to 40% of the population of Israel , believes that the territories acquired by the Jews in Israel are disproportionately smaller than the real estate they lost during the exile, and the material losses of the Palestinians expelled from their lands are also less than the losses of the expelled Jews.

The position of the opponents of Israel

• Arabic states and local Arabs were initially categorically opposed to the creation of the state of Israel on the territory of Palestine.
• Radical political and terrorist movements, as well as the governments of some countries, fundamentally deny Israel's right to exist.
• With a trend of strengthening fundamentalist sentiments in the Arab world since the second half of XX century, the Arab position is complemented by the spread of a religious belief that this territory is part of the original Muslim lands.
• Opponents and critics Israel believe that the policy of this state in the occupied territories turned into racism and apartheid gradually depriving the Palestinians of their land and flagrantly violating their rights.

Stages of confrontation

An analysis of the dynamics of the conflict allowed us to identify 4 main stages of confrontation.

At the first stage (until May 14, 1948), the conflict was purely local. It is very difficult to determine the specific subjects of confrontation, because in each camp there were forces configured both for dialogue and for confrontation. In general, the responsibility for the escalation of tension at this stage, in our opinion, should be relatively equally divided between the parties. But one should also note the initially more compromising and peaceful attitude of the Jewish leaders (which was embodied in public statements and the Declaration of Independence).

The next stage lasted from the beginning of the war in 1948 to the end of the war in 1973. This period of confrontation was the bloodiest, and it can certainly be called the core of the confrontation. During these 25 years, there have been five (!) full-scale military clashes. All of them were won by Israel. Wars were either started or provoked to some extent by the Arab states. During this period, there was no systematic peace process (with the exception of extremely rare post-war peace negotiations).

The third stage of the conflict (from 1973 to 1993) is characterized by the beginning of the peace process, a series of strategic negotiations and peace agreements (Camp David, Oslo). Here, part of the Arab states changed their positions and entered into peace negotiations with Israel. However, the positive mood was somewhat overshadowed by the 1982 war in Lebanon.

Since 1994, has been counting modern stage conflict. The military confrontation has moved into the realm of terrorism and anti-terrorist operations. The peace process has become systemic, but far from completely successful. The resolution of the conflict became an international task, which involved international mediators in the peace process. At this stage, all participants in the conflict (with the exception of some radical terrorist groups) finally realized the need for a peaceful way to resolve the conflict.

The current events

On November 27, 2007, Ehud Olmert and Mahmoud Abbas agreed to start negotiations and reach a final agreement on a Palestinian state by the end of 2008. However, this was not possible, the negotiations were interrupted at the end of December 2008 in connection with Israel's operation "Cast Lead" against the Hamas group in the Gaza Strip. Israel explained the operation "Cast Lead" by the need to stop years of rocket attacks from Gaza, as a result of the operation, more than 1,300 Palestinians and 14 Israelis were killed.

In 2009, negotiations with Fatah continued with the participation of the new Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the new US President Barack Obama. On June 21, Netanyahu presented his plan for a Middle East settlement, within which he agreed to the creation of a Palestinian state with limited rights, if the Palestinians recognize Israel as the national home of the Jewish people, and receive guarantees for Israel's security, including international ones.

In November 2009, the Israeli government announced a ten-month moratorium on construction in Jewish settlements in the West Bank, but this moratorium did not satisfy the Palestinian side, since it did not apply to East Jerusalem.

On September 2, 2010, direct negotiations between the PNA and the Israeli government were resumed. However, these negotiations are in danger of collapse due to contradictions in

the Israeli government over the extension of the moratorium on settlement construction, and because of the unwillingness of the Palestinian Authority to continue direct negotiations if the moratorium is not extended.

The current stage of development of the conflict.

Since 1987, pogroms and bloodshed have shaken Palestine. It all started with the Intifada on December 7 of the same year. Then the Palestinian Arabs held demonstrations in the Gaza Strip. The reason was the twenty-year occupation of the Palestinian territories. The Israelis staged an armed suppression of the Intifada. As the International Red Cross announced in 1990, more than 800 Palestinians were killed by Jews, more than 16,000 were arrested. The intifada had a negative impact on the Israeli economy, budget cuts led to significant unemployment [11].

On November 15, 1988, the PLO proclaimed the creation of the State of Palestine with Jerusalem as its capital, after which the peace process begins in the Middle East. To strengthen peace in 1991, on the initiative of the USA and the USSR, the Madrid Middle East Peace Conference was held. On Thursday, September 28, 2000, Ariel Sharon announced that he was not going to divide Jerusalem into an Arab and a Jewish part. This remark provoked violence in Jerusalem from 29 September to 6 October. Palestinian youths threw stones at the police. By the end of the first day, more than 200 people had been injured and 4 Palestinians had been killed. The next day, the Israeli police began to storm the Muslim part of Jerusalem. More than 80 Palestinians were killed. On October 4, Arafat met with new Israeli Prime Minister Bakr, but no agreement was signed. The situation in Palestine and on the Lebanese-Israeli border was heating up. Hezbollah abducted several Israeli army soldiers.

War and its aftermath

Now, as in 1982, there was only one force left in Lebanon that the Israeli authorities want to get rid of - Hezbollah.

The war began on July 12, 2006 with the attack of the Israeli army on Lebanon. At first glance, the goal of the war is the return of two kidnapped Israeli soldiers, but then it becomes clear that the United States is behind this war and the real goal is to drag Iran and Syria into the war.

The Israeli army carried out a sea and air blockade of Lebanon. Every day, the Tsakhal carried out rocket attacks throughout Lebanon, which was the result of numerous civilian casualties. As in the first war, Israel's only opponent was Hezbollah. This time, the Israeli forces did not manage to penetrate far, no one expected such a strong rebuff from Hezbollah. Israel bombed all of Lebanon from the air, when the Shiite organization bombed the north of Israel with its missiles, including the second most economically developed city in Israel, Haifa. Hezbollah killed more than 160 Israeli soldiers, when Israel had only 80 Hezbollah fighters and about 1000 Lebanese civilians (that is, more than 70% of the Lebanese killed were civilians, these figures once again prove to us the cruelty of the Israeli military). On August 11, the UN issued a resolution on a ceasefire, and already on August 14, the war ended with the victory of Hezbollah. 5,000 UN soldiers were sent to the conflict area. Israeli Chief of Staff Dan Halutz said that "Israel will set Lebanon back 20 years." And so it all happened, this war completely destroyed the infrastructure of Lebanon, throwing it back 20 years ago. Over 160 bridges and over 200 highways were disabled.

Conclusion

Throughout the work, we studied the history of the emergence of the Arab-Israeli conflict and its impact in the political and economic sphere in our time. After studying and analyzing this topic, we came to the following conclusions:

The Middle East can be used as a motive and reason for the start of the World Civilizational War, the logical outcome of which could be a nuclear confrontation between the superpowers

After numerous wars between Israel and the Arab countries, many humanitarian problems have appeared, the main of which are the following:

The problem of Palestinian refugees and Israeli settlers

The problem of prisoners of war and political prisoners

The problem of the daily bombing of Israel and the Palestinian Authority

And also, having familiarized ourselves with the events in the Middle East, we offer our own way out of the situation in Palestine: the Israeli government must retreat from the Zionist policy and establish equality between all segments of the population in order to solve the problem of Palestinian refugees. Also, Israel must return the Golan Heights of Syria, which it occupied in 1967, which belong to it under international law.

The history of the conflict between Israel and Palestine has been going on for decades. Exacerbations alternate with thaws. The confrontation has many reasons: geopolitical, religious, economic and ideological. In modern history, almost all the states of the Middle East have been drawn into the conflict between the countries of Palestine and Israel. In addition, the conflict concerns the interests of other states of the world community.

Ancient times

Now it is hard to imagine, but once peace reigned in the ancient lands of Palestine. Arabs and Jews coexisted in this territory in ancient times. They lived in what is now Palestine from the 12th century BC. This continued until the creation of the Roman Empire. The Romans drove out the Jews, while the Arabs continued to exist in the Palestinian lands. In the future, Palestine was part of Byzantium, the Arab Caliphate and the Ottoman Empire. At the beginning of the 20th century, the territory came under British control.

Return of the Jews to Palestine

By the 20th century, there were about seven percent of the Jews among the inhabitants of Palestine, the rest of the population were Arabs. The Zionist organization, formed by small Jewish communities, in 1897 at a congress in Basel decided to Jewishize Palestine as the historical homeland of the people. The active settlement of the territory of Palestine by Jews began after the end of the First World War. Then the dominance over the region was transferred to Great Britain. This was the beginning of the history of the conflict between Israel and Palestine.

The British Foreign Secretary began to promote the idea of ​​returning the Jewish people to the land of Palestine. One of the steps towards the realization of this idea was a letter from the minister to the leader of the Zionist movement, according to which Palestine was affirmed as the center of the Jewish nation.

Causes of the conflict

It is necessary to consider in more detail what is the cause of the conflict between Israel and Palestine. The main indicator that gave impetus to the formation of the conflict was the territorial issue. At the time of the mass migration of Jews, Palestine was already densely populated by Arabs, who had lived there for about one and a half thousand years. The Arabs quite rightly considered themselves the indigenous inhabitants of the state and did not want to share the territorial and natural resources of their country with anyone.

Another important reason inciting hatred in the history of the conflict between Israel and Palestine was the religious factor. Incompatible ideologies, the location on the same territory of shrines, cultural and historical values ​​​​of the two peoples have not been allowed to resolve differences for more than a decade.

Impact of World War II

The Second World War and its aftermath marked a new milestone in the history of the conflict between Palestine and Israel. The facts that served to develop the conflict were the massive emigration flows of Jews to Palestine and the growth of terrorist groups from both opponents.

During the war, about two hundred thousand Jews arrived in Palestine. Thus, by 1947, almost a third of the population of Palestine consisted of Jews. In addition, dissatisfaction with British domination grew among the Arabs. The Arab population of the country made several attempts to overthrow the British authorities, who encouraged the resettlement of Jews. It also provoked the creation of various Arab and Zionist terrorist movements.

Formation of the State of Israel

In connection with the aggravated situation in Palestine and the increased number of armed clashes between Arabs and Jews, Great Britain turned to the world community for help in resolving the conflict. This issue was submitted to the UN General Assembly in November 1947. As a result, world political leaders in the UN adopted a resolution on the creation of a new state.Thus, Palestine was divided into three parts: Jewish Israel, Arab Palestine and neutral territory - the city of Jerusalem. This was the most important event in the history of the conflict between Israel and Palestine.

This decision could not suit the Arabs in any way. This was due to the fact that Israel was allocated a territory of three thousand square meters more than for an Arab state, although the numberArabs living in Palestine outnumbered the Jewish population.

The Arab states immediately reacted to the UN resolution, and in 1948 the first Arab-Israeli war began. Since then, the conflict between the countries of Palestine and Israel has escalated into a larger Arab-Israeli conflict.

War for independence

The war lasted a year. Six Arab states opposed Israel. The most active opponents of Israel were Egypt, Syria and Lebanon. As a result of the war, Israel not only defended its right to be called an independent state, but also won back another seven thousand square kilometers of Palestinian land. The Arab state planned in the resolution was never created.

The territories not captured by Israel were divided between Egypt and Jordan. During the war, nine hundred thousand Arabs fled from Palestine. More than five hundred thousand Jews were expelled from Arab countries and settled in Israel.

Suez Crisis

The next aggravation of the Arab-Israeli conflict came in 1956. The initiator of hostilities, called the "Suez Crisis", was France and Great Britain, opposing the nationalization of the Suez Canal by Egypt. Israel joined the European states, while Egypt was supported by the US and the USSR. This time luck accompanied the Arab side of the conflict. Having won the war, Egypt actually became the leader of the Arab community. Later, the president of this particular country initiated the creation of an anti-Israeli coalition.

Six Day War and Judgment Day

The next war began eleven years later. After the Arabs closed the Red Sea and the Gulf of Suez to Jewish ships, Israel went on the offensive. In just six days, the Israeli army managed to capture a significant part of the strategically important territories and expand its possessions.

Another attack followed from Syria and Egypt seven years later. It was the fourth war in the chronology of the Arab-Israeli conflict. On the sixth of October, the holy Jewish holiday - Judgment Day - the Arabs attacked Israel. The confrontation lasted twenty days, the Israeli army repelled the attack.

Peace treaty

Subsequently, Jews began to massively settle in the occupied territories, which was actively supported by the Israeli government. The world community called this step an occupation and condemned it in UN Resolution No. 242. According to this resolution, Israel was to vacate the occupied territories, except for those that were captured during the first war in 1948. However, this decision did not suit both warring parties, and the resolution was rejected.

The first step towards peace between Israel and Egypt was taken in 1977. The President of Egypt visited the Jewish state, thereby recognizing its existence. Many Arab leaders regarded this act as a betrayal. Thus, in the Arab League there was a split into supporters of a peace agreement with Israel and protesters. Libya, Syria and Algeria turned out to be the main opponents of peace with Israel. These countries have declared a political and trade boycott against states and companies that recognize Israel's independence. In 1978, a US-brokered peace treaty was signed between Egypt and Israel. Under this agreement, Israel liberated the Sinai Peninsula.

Relations with the Arab League

In the 1980s, relations between Israel and Lebanon worsened. The fifth war has begun. The Israeli army launched air strikes on the places of concentration of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). The Israeli government withdrew its troops from the territory of Lebanon only at the beginning of the third millennium. This was largely influenced by the pressure of peacekeeping organizations.

The Arab uprising that broke out in the occupied territory forced the Israeli government to seek peaceful ways settlement of the aggravated situation. The result of the settlement of the conflict was a peaceful alliance with Jordan and attempts to declare the independence of the state of Palestine.

As a result of the agreements reached in 1993, the PLO recognized the independence of Israel, which, in turn, recognized the right to exist of the Palestinian national autonomy and undertook to withdraw its troops from the Gaza Strip and the West Bank of the Jordan. Over the following years, the peace process slowed down several times, which was associated with a change of government in Israel and new armed actions by both opponents. The absence of clearly defined borders of states prevented the conclusion of peace from putting an end to it. Difficulties also arose in connection with the growing number of terrorist groups of radical Arabs and Israelis.

It is difficult to describe the history of the conflict between Israel and Palestine briefly, as this history continues today. For many years of confrontation, there have been a huge number of aggravations of the conflict and attempts to peacefully resolve it. Today, the most active opponent of the state of Israel is the Islamic movement.Hamas came to power in Palestine in 2006.

Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said today that residents of the Gaza Strip may not count on the normalization of the economic situation, including the lifting of the border blockade, as long as the Hamas movement remains in power there. The conflict, however, is no longer limited to the territory of the Palestinian enclave - Israel today came under rocket fire from Lebanon. In Russian society, and especially on the Internet, the Arab-Israeli conflict, as always, is being discussed unusually vigorously. The correspondent of Fontanka understood the true causes of the Middle East problems.

Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said today that residents of the Gaza Strip may not count on the normalization of the economic situation, including the lifting of the border blockade, as long as the Hamas movement remains in power there. The conflict, however, is no longer limited to the territory of the Palestinian enclave - Israel today came under rocket fire from Lebanon. In Russian society, and especially on the Internet, the Arab-Israeli conflict, as always, is being discussed unusually vigorously. In the shade of native birches, opponents express peremptory opinions that would be more appropriate under the canopy of Lebanese cedars. The correspondent of Fontanka understood the true causes of the Middle East problems.

The Arab-Israeli conflict, as we know it, did not begin a year or two ago. However, there is an exact date from which the chronology can be counted. This is November 29, 1947, when the UN General Assembly adopted resolution No. 181 on the division of Palestine into two states - Jewish and Arab.

Since the end of the First World War, this territory was under the British Mandate. The British maintained a certain order there, which, roughly speaking, amounted to the fact that in response to Arab protests against Jewish immigration, quotas were introduced for the number of visitors. Nevertheless, the number of visitors grew, and the situation in the region became more and more difficult. Great Britain decided to leave the fate of Palestine to the discretion of the UN.

The moment was chosen exactly - literally a couple of years, and the creation of the state of Israel, most likely, would be out of the question. Back in March 1946, Winston Churchill gave his famous Fulton speech, which is customary to count the beginning of the Cold War. After World War II, Britain's position in the world weakened, and the Middle East was divided among the new superpowers - the Soviet Union and the United States. Here, the future opponents turned out to be unexpectedly unanimous.

President Harry Truman explained his position to his own State Department in 1946: “I beg your pardon, gentlemen, but I have to take into account the hundreds of thousands of those who stand for the success of Zionism. There are not hundreds of thousands of Arabs among my voters.”

The Soviet leadership could also count on the fact that Israel would become a "red" outpost in the Middle East - among the settlers there were many immigrants from Russia, who often adhered to very leftist beliefs. Finally, in his memoirs, NKVD General Pavel Sudoplatov points to other motives of Joseph Stalin, citing his following words: “Let's agree with the formation of Israel. This will be a pain in the ass for the Arab states, and then they will seek an alliance with us.”

This was said almost on the eve of the consideration of a resolution on Palestine by the UN, and, it is worth noting, this is how events developed in the future - it quickly became clear that Israel was not ready to act in line with the Soviet line, but the friendship of the USSR with Syria, Egypt, Libya and other Middle Eastern regimes gradually expanded.

The UN resolution of November 29, 1947 prescribed an approximately equal division of Palestine between Jews and Arabs. Both sides received three staggered enclaves, while Jerusalem and Bethlehem, as places of importance for the three faiths - Jews, Muslims and Christians - were to remain under international control. 33 countries, including the USA and the USSR, voted for this decision, 13 were "against", and 10, including the UK, abstained. It is worth noting that a number of radical Jewish public organizations operating in Palestine did not support this decision, and the League of Arab States strongly opposed it.

However, on May 14, 1948, one day before the end of the British Mandate for Palestine, David Ben-Gurion, Israel's first prime minister, proclaimed the declaration of a Jewish state. The very next day, Syria, Egypt, Lebanon, Iraq and Jordan attacked the new country. Israel withstood, and under the control of Jordan and Egypt were, respectively, the West Bank of the Jordan and the Gaza Strip. These are approximately the territories on which, according to the UN resolution, the state of the Arabs of Palestine was to be created.

Even then, David Ben-Gurion himself did not build any special illusions about the legitimacy of the State of Israel from the point of view of international law. In 1950, he admonished Israeli diplomats this way: “When the state was proclaimed, it faced three problems: the problem of borders, the problem of refugees, and the problem of Jerusalem. None of them has been and will not be solved by persuasion. Only the recognition of the irreversibility of political changes can contribute to their solution. […] We captured Beersheba against the opinion of the UN and the Security Council. The same applies to Jaffa, Lod, Ramla and Western Galilee. The refugee problem will also be solved by the force of facts, namely our refusal to allow them to return. In this matter, it is most difficult to explain the validity of our position. In addressing these three problems, the creation of an irreversible political reality takes precedence over the politics of persuasion.” An irreversible political reality has not been created for 60 years.

It is worth noting that the potential for the development of statehood among the Jews and Arabs of Palestine was quite different. The book of the founder of Zionism, Theodor Herzl, The Jewish State. An Experience of the Modern Solution of the Jewish Question” was published as early as 1896, and since then many bright minds have worked on this issue. At the same time, the Arabs of Palestine, who had not yet tasted the fruits of European civilization, after the Second World War lived in the difficult conditions of their desert land and did not think about statehood.

However, a little less than twenty years later, this problem has become quite relevant. In 1964, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) was formed. And three years later, as a result of the Six-Day War, Israel gained control of Gaza, the West Bank of the Jordan and eastern Jerusalem with its shrines. It is in connection with this that the PLO begins to develop broad - including terrorist - activities.

Just before the start of the war, the famous Israeli poetess Naomi Shemer wrote the song "Yerushalayim shel zaahav" - "Jerusalem of Gold". Against the background of the victories of the Israeli army, it immediately became the informal anthem of the country, symbolizing the end of the centuries-old humiliation of the Jewish people. The song was later used by Steven Spielberg in the movie Schindler's List and became the official anthem for Israel's 60th anniversary.

Oddly enough, but the motives of the Palestinians are surprisingly consonant with the intonations of this song - it is all about overcoming national humiliation and returning pride. On one of their websites, adherents of independent Palestine write this: “We were one of the most despised and abused nations in our era until the intifada began (the uprising of the Palestinians against the Israeli authorities - approx. “Fontanka”). It has greatly reduced the despair in our souls, it has changed the way we look at ourselves, it has allowed us to say: We were a nation of defeatists, submissive people with a frozen history. However, the intifada, with its dynamic history, allowed the Arabs to change their perception of themselves, to better understand the world around them.”

In total, since its existence, Israel has experienced seven wars, in three of which it started hostilities itself, and two intifadas. Hamas is now calling on its supporters for a third intifada. Enough blood has been spilled on both sides and too many words have been said to understand that the situation has no solution. In fact, it is not possible to divide, for example, the Negev desert as a percentage of the number of victims on both sides.

But the war continues even when the soldiers return to the garrisons, and the partisans to their bases. The Arab-Israeli conflict is not only and not even so much the number of victims on both sides, but the confrontation of opinions and a dispute over words. And here everything comes into play - from talking about the fact that since the Palestinians never had a state, they do not have the right to it (why, in fact, not?), to beaten horror stories about bloody matzah.

There are even more sophisticated examples. Israel Defense Forces corporal Gilad Shalit was taken hostage on June 25, 2006 by Hamas militants who demanded the release of women and children under 18 from Israeli prisons. Three days later, Israel launched Operation Summer Rains to rescue the corporal. The whole story was heatedly discussed in the media and began to resemble an episode from the movie "The Tail Wags the Dog" about a private hero nicknamed Old Shoe. The "Summer Rains" ended with the economic blockade of Gaza. And now, when the conflict has flared up again, the Palestinians are already declaring that Gilad Shalit was wounded as a result of Israeli shelling of the peaceful quarters of Gaza.

Developing Clausewitz, information warfare is a continuation of conventional warfare by other means. To the massive support of the Western media for Israel, which is inevitable, if only because most of the bureaus are located in Tel Aviv, and not in Gaza, Palestine responds with the inventive tradition of "Pallywood". This term has recently been used to designate Arab television studios in which staged stories about the conflict are filmed. Recently, for example, a story appeared on Gaza television in which cruel Zionists kill Farfour, a mouse beloved by Palestinian children. Filmed in the format of a news story, Farfour is portrayed by an actor in a suit. Following Farfur, the bee Nakhul and the bunny Assud became martyrs.

Nobility and desire for peace in the positions of both sides, in fact, is not much. Suicide bombers on Jerusalem buses are found being besieged by Israeli forces in Beirut in 1982. Then aviation and artillery bombarded the city for two months in a row, causing irreparable damage to it. On the shelling of Israeli territories with Kassam missiles - the hunt for the terrorists of the Black September group, who were killed by the Mossad without trial or investigation, moreover, an outside waiter was killed at the same time. Of course, they are terrorists, but what about the notorious legal norms?

The Palestinian administration is not sympathetic, with the PLO mired in corruption under Yasser Arafat, and Fatah and Hamas, which are now more concerned with the struggle for power than solving the problem of independence. But the Israeli ideology, which, on the one hand, in the mouths of some politicians, clearly smacks of natural fascism, and, on the other hand, as if as a payment for the Holocaust, on occasion frees the authorities from any existing legal norms, to put it mildly, causes mixed feelings. .

But don't blame the little ones for everything. After all, the State of Israel, with all its flaws and virtues, was not created by kibbutznik settlers. Its appearance was the result of the system of international law, the sketches of which were sketched back in 1945 at the Yalta Conference. Palestine became one of the bargaining chips used by the USSR and the USA in their competition.

The system has since become dilapidated and cramped, the UN is remembered only in connection with some cultural activity, but no one has revised the rules of the game. Therefore, making predictions about the resolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict is the same as entering into a dispute of pique vests. The role of Barack Obama, oil prices, the number of victims, and even Dmitry Medvedev is completely unimportant here. Shooting in Gaza will end a little later or a little earlier. Then it will start again, maybe in the West Bank. Or maybe the Arabs will start killing each other.

It is virtually impossible to unfold any tangle of contradictions that goes back into the depths of the twentieth century. Too many dead, too many words, and, as a rule, mercenary and dishonest. There are many examples. For example, North and South Korea, obviously, they themselves will never agree on the unification, and this problem does not bother anyone anymore. The southerners themselves feel pretty good, and only the United States sometimes remembers the northerners in connection with paranoia about the nuclear threat.

There are also episodes that have become history at all, but still remain the reason for long-term political strife. For example, the problem of the Armenian genocide in the Ottoman Empire. It is obvious that Turkey will not recognize it for the foreseeable future. The massacres of the Armenian population in 1915, of course, were (as, indeed, the Turkish). But, returning to Israel, the recognition of the genocide may entail analogies with the Holocaust and corresponding claims from the Armenians. How far they can go is unknown.

All these episodes have one thing in common. These are the concepts of the national state, self-determination, sovereignty, which, having originated with capitalism at the dawn of the New Age, have become small for the current global world. The listed conflicts can develop more or less bloody, but their radical solution requires a revision of the current system of international relations, which would allow the creation of some new institutions that act in the interests of the common good and humanism, and not to please any of the parties. As they wrote in the Soviet press, in the interests of peace and good neighborliness.

Unfortunately, such changes are impossible without great upheavals. And they will happen. Maybe not tomorrow, and not even ten years later, but they are inevitable, and will bring with them new insoluble conflicts. The story hasn't ended.

Nikolay Konashenok,
Fontanka.ru

The Palestinian-Israeli conflict has again received a loud development. Not stopping for centuries, political, territorial, national, and God knows what other conflict, again hit the front pages. What is the reason for such a long confrontation with the presence of Turkey and the United States?

The conflict between Palestine and Israel - where the roots come from - the history of development in brief

Buried deep in the years is the original cause of the conflict. Palestine and Israel are the closest neighbors, which are located in the same region of the Middle East. Thus, Jews and indigenous Arabs coexisted quite peacefully in this region. However, at the beginning of the 19th century, the Jewish component began to increase sharply. There are many reasons for this - firstly, the natural increase in the population, and secondly, the movement of Jews "to their homeland", to Jerusalem. But the situation has worsened since the Second World War and the genocide of Jews. Then, driven by the horrors of the Nazism of the Third Reich, the Zionites moved to Palestine. As a nation that did not have its own lands, the Jews were "on the bird's rights."

After the end of World War II, more precisely in 1949, after the admission of Israel to the UN, the rights of Jews to Israel became somewhat clearer. Having a claim to the territory of Palestine, the Israelis achieved the division of the state into two parts: Arab and Jewish. This began the acute phase of the conflict.

The reason for the conflict is the resonance of the world solution and the intransigence of the parties. Both sides take an active part in hostilities. First, the radical Zionists who refused to accept the independence of the Arab part of Palestine. Secondly, a large number of Muslim countries simply did not accept a state like Israel. These were and are Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Military operations began, during which the Israelis pushed back the Arabs, conquering all of Palestine for themselves. The outflow of Arabs from Palestine to other Muslim countries and the influx of Jews into their state began.

What is happening there now?

The Palestinian-Israeli conflict is relevant to this day, just as it has been unresolved for the whole century. In December 2017, the ongoing confrontation made people talk about themselves after the announcement of US President Donald Trump recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. Trump reinforced his decision by moving the American embassy from Tel Aviv to the holy city. Thus, Trump intends to show his conviction that this step will put an end to the resolution of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

This decision was the reason for the intensification of indignation in Palestine and other Muslim countries. As a result of mass demonstrations in Israel near the border with Damascus, 10 people were injured, and as a result of clashes between Palestinians and Israelis from the west of the Jordan River, 90 protesters were injured. In addition, as reported by NTV.

The world community also reacted ambiguously to Trump's decision, in particular, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. He is very skeptical about it, explaining it this way:

“Declaring Jerusalem the capital of Israel and moving the American embassy to this city is a senseless step in the eyes of Turkey. On our initiative, on December 13, an emergency meeting of the leaders of the OIC countries will be held in Istanbul. They will adopt a roadmap that demonstrates that implementing Trump's decision will not be easy."

In addition, Erdogan believes that Israel is a terrorist state, about which he spoke unambiguously:

“We will not leave Jerusalem at the mercy of a child-killing terrorist state that has no other goals than occupation and plunder. We will resolutely continue our fight,” he said.

As if echoing him, representatives of other Muslim countries are rallying around the world. Classics - rallies, clashes, burning photos of the American president and the US flag.