What Do they Say?

CNN.com 2002 :

Path to peace runs through a history of tumult

For centuries the Middle East has been a site of conflict over land sacred to Christians, Muslims and Jews.

And while the echoes of the older conflict still ring in the crashing stones and staccato gunfire of the current dispute, an understanding of the conflict's history cannot undo decades of mistrust and animosity between the Israelis and Palestinians.

How Palestine became Israel?

From antiquity until the 20th century the name Palestine more often described a region than a place with precise boundaries. It is derived from what the Greeks and Romans called the "Land of the Philistines," referring to an ancient people who were contemporaries of the biblical Israelites as early as the 12th century B.C.

In 1920, Palestine gained political borders for the first time in nearly 2,000 years under the British Mandate that followed the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in World War I. Follow the evolution of the region from 1920 to modern Israel.

1920 Mandate Border

Syria was part of the Ottoman Empire from 1516 until World War I. Its border with what is now Israel was established in 1920 by France and Great Britain as part of the postwar division of Ottoman Syria. If Israel were to retain control of land west of the 1920 border, it would control the eastern shore of the Sea of Galilee and key water resources

1947- 48 Partition

In November 1947 the United Nations ordered the partition of Palestine into a Jewish state and an Arab state, and the end of the British Mandate by May 15, 1948. The Arab powers of the Middle East rejected the partition plan, and hours after Zionist leader David Ben-Gurion declared Israel a state on May 14, the forces of Egypt, Iraq, Syria, Transjordan and Lebanon invaded the new country.

Bitter fighting ensued, but by July 1949 Israel had repulsed the invasion, established borders similar to Palestine under the mandate, joined the United Nations, and been recognized by more than 50 governments around the world.

1949 Armistice

In a series of armistices with Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon in 1949, Israel established borders similar to those of Palestine during the British Mandate. Jordan retained the West Bank of the Jordan River and Jerusalem was divided under Israeli and Jordanian rule.

In late October 1956, instigated by Britain and France during the crisis over Egypt's seizure of the Suez Canal, Israel invaded the Sinai Peninsula to destroy military bases. Israel captured Gaza and Sharm el Sheikh at the tip of the Sinai Peninsula that controls access to the Gulf of Aqaba. It also occupied most of Sinai east of the canal. According to plan, the British and French intervened in the conflict to enforce a U.N. cease-fire. The crisis ended in December when the United Nations stationed a peacekeeping force in Sinai. Israel withdrew in March 1957.

Six-Day War

As Egypt, Syria and Jordan mobilized their forces in spring 1967 for an evident impending attack, Israel launched a preemptive strike. Starting on June 5, the Israeli air force destroyed Egypt's planes on the ground; then Israeli tank columns and infantry overran the Golan Heights, the West Bank of the Jordan River, including the Old City of Jerusalem, Gaza and the Sinai Peninsula. The war was over by June 10, ended by a U.N.-arranged cease-fire.

Egypt and Syria attacked Israel in October 1973 (during Yom Kippur, the Jewish holy day). Israel suffered heavy casualties but managed to repulse the attacks. It even pushed Egyptian forces back across the Suez Canal and occupied its west bank before the belligerents agreed to another cease-fire arranged by the United Nations.

In a series of 1974 agreements Israel withdrew its forces back across the canal into Sinai and came to cease-fire terms with Syria. In the Camp David Accords of March 1979, Egypt and Israel finally ended the war between them. Israel returned the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt, and Egypt recognized Israel's right to exist.

1993 Accords

Under the guidance of Norwegian Foreign Minister Johan Holst, Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization negotiated secretly in Oslo a "Declaration of Principles," signed in Washington on September 13, 1993, by PLO chairman Yasser Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.

Israel agreed to eventually withdraw troops from Gaza and the West Bank, except for the city of Hebron, and to Palestinian self-rule of those areas. In accompanying "Letters of Mutual Recognition," Israel recognized the PLO as the legitimate representative of the Palestinian people and the PLO recognized Israel's right to exist.

Negotiations between Israel and the PLO today are based on the principles set down in the 1993 accords.

Status of Jerusalem

The status of Jerusalem is one of the most contentious issues in the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. Ground zero in the dispute is a hill in Jerusalem known to Jews as the Temple Mount and to Muslims as the Haram al-Sharif, or the Noble Sanctuary. That precious piece of real estate is believed to contain the ruins of Judaism's holiest temple, on top of which stands the Dome of the Rock and the Al-Aqsa mosque, Islam's third-holiest site. The 1999 Camp David talks broke down in part over the issue of which side would have sovereignty over the land on which the holy sites stand.

The terms of the U.N. partition of 1947 call for Jerusalem to be an international city shared between a Jewish and Palestinian state. . But Israel annexed West Jerusalem after its war of independence and East Jerusalem -- which includes the Dome of the Rock -- in 1967. East Jerusalem is primarily populated by Arabs and West Jerusalem by Jewish residents.

Israeli viewpoint

Ceding control even over the Palestinian neighborhoods of East Jerusalem, or the Old City, is a red line for many Israelis, who consider Jerusalem to be the heart of Zionism and an important part of Jewish identity. They want to ensure that they maintain access to sites they consider sacred, and they are not willing to negotiate on this point.

Palestinian viewpoint

Besides Palestinians' historic territorial claims on Jerusalem's Old City, the presence there of the Islamic holy sites makes the issue a red line not only for Palestinians but for the entire Arab and Muslim world. Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat was unable to compromise at Camp David on his demand for sovereignty over the sites and the eastern portion of the city.

Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat

Creating a Palestinian state has been a dream of Yasser Arafat's since he was a Palestinian nationalist in Egypt smuggling guns into Palestine.

That dream sustained him during his years as a guerrilla fighter with a pistol on his hip, and it has guided him through his leadership of the Palestine Liberation Organization.

Arafat was born Mohammed Abdel-Raouf Arafat al Qudwa al-Hussein in Cairo, Egypt, on August 24, 1929, the son of a successful merchant. His mother died when he was 4, and he went to live with an uncle in Jerusalem, a city that was ruled by the British under a League of Nations mandate (installed after World War I).

It was during those years that Arafat was exposed to the clash between Arabs and Jews, particularly Jews who immigrated to build a Jewish homeland in Palestine.

A student in Cairo

While attending the University of Cairo, from which he graduated as a civil engineer, Arafat undertook a study of Jewish life, associating with Jews and reading the works of Zionists such as Theodor Herzl. But by 1946, he had become a Palestinian nationalist and was procuring weapons in Egypt to be smuggled into Palestine in the Arab cause.

In November 1947, the United Nations voted to end the British Mandate over Palestine by May 15, 1948, and to partition it into Jewish and Arab states, with Jerusalem an international city. Jews in Palestine and elsewhere readily accepted the partition.

The response by Palestine's neighbors was overwhelmingly negative. Intent on preventing any Jewish entity in the region, they rejected the plan, and in what was to be a precursor to many more wars, the armies of Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Egypt and Iraq invaded the new country with the declared intent of destroying it.

When this first Arab-Israeli war broke out in 1948, reports say that Arafat slipped into Palestine to fight the Israelis.

He later claimed, however, that he and his compatriots were disarmed and turned back by other Arabs who did not want the help of Palestinian irregulars. After Israel won the war, Palestinians suffered a significant humiliation when the 750,000 Palestinian Arabs were left without a state of their own.

In the 1950s, Arafat was commissioned into the Egyptian army and fought in the 1956 Suez campaign.

After leaving the army, Arafat worked as an engineer in Kuwait. During this time, he and several Palestinian Arab associates formed a movement that became known as Al Fatah, an organization dedicated to reclaiming Palestine for the Palestinians. This group and others eventually operated under the PLO, an umbrella organization formed in 1964.

Running Al Fatah became Arafat's full-time occupation, and by 1965 the organization was launching guerrilla raids and terrorist attacks into Israel.

But in the Six-Day War of 1967, Israel emerged victorious and captured the Golan Heights from Syria, the West Bank from Jordan and Gaza and most of the Sinai Peninsula from Egypt.

King Hussein removes PLO from Jordan

Arafat and Al Fatah received international publicity in 1968 when they inflicted a significant defeat on Israeli troops that entered Jordan.

The PLO's activities troubled Jordan's King Hussein, however, and after a civil war in 1971, Hussein forced the Palestinians to leave Jordan. In an interesting twist, two visits from an ailing King Hussein to the Wye River negotiations were what encouraged Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to reach an agreement.

After leaving Jordan, the PLO set up bases in Lebanon and continued to carry out raids against Israel. Arafat, however, came to be regarded as a villain for his suspected involvement in the murder of Israeli athletes by the Black September organization at the Munich Olympics in 1972.

But in 1974 he was allowed to address the United Nations, and that organization voted to grant observer status to the PLO.

Eight years later, in June 1982, Israel retaliated for a series of PLO raids by launching an all-out counterattack that destroyed PLO headquarters in Beirut, Lebanon.

Arafat re-established new headquarters in Tunisia and gave his organization's support to Palestinians in the West Bank and other occupied territories who began to riot against Israel.

Shakes hands with Rabin

In 1988, Arafat proclaimed an independent Palestinian state on the West Bank and Gaza and told the United Nations that the PLO renounced terrorism. He said the PLO supported the right of all parties to live in peace -- Israel included.

By the year's end, 70 countries had recognized the PLO, but its credibility was undermined with much of the Arab world in 1990 by its support of Iraq during the Persian Gulf War.

But the PLO had officially recognized Israel, and in 1993 Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin signed the Oslo peace accords that established a framework for an agreement aimed at bringing peace to the region.

The accords called for the gradual withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza and the West Bank, and the creation of the Palestinian Authority as the Palestinian governing body in the occupied territories.

Rabin and Arafat were rewarded for their efforts by being named co-winners of the Nobel Peace Prize, along with Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres.

In January 1996, Arafat won the presidency of the Palestinian Authority.

The peace process became mired in violence that escalated in September 2000, following a visit by Israeli Likud Party leader Ariel Sharon to the hotly disputed Jerusalem site known as the Temple Mount to Jews and as Haram al-Sharif, or Nobel Sanctuary, by Muslims.

Sharon, who went on to unseat Ehud Barak in the 2001 election for Israeli prime minister, has admonished Arafat to reign in Palestinian rock-throwing youths and suicide bombers. Arafat has responded that he cannot control random acts of violence by militant factions and has accused Sharon of escalating the violence

That is what the CNN says ,, But if u wanna know the truth

Sharon or The Zionist Protocols

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