History and Development of International Conflict Management: Israel-Arab Conflict

Today, the 22 member-states of the Arab League are scattered across the Middle East and North Africa where the lands have long been the source of conflict. Indeed, since antiquity, the lands that are currently occupied by Arab nations have been the fountainhead from which humankind emerged, as well as the source of relentless wars between the Arab and Israeli peoples based on fundamentally different ideological, political and religious worldviews. Despite some on-again, off-again diplomatic efforts to identify viable paths forward for peaceful co-existence of the Arab nations and Israel over the years, the troubling headlines today closely resemble those from countless years past. To determine the facts about this seemingly intractable conflict and to identify opportunities for going forward, the purpose of this study is to provide a detailed background of the modern Israel-Arab conflict beginning with the biblical point and view followed by a discussion concerning the various concepts and theories that underpin the conflict. In addition, the study identifies the relevant conflict management styles that have been employed in the conflict and an application of the appropriate conflict management tools that should enable conflict management specialists to proffer practical recommendations for resolving the conflict. Finally, the study summarizes the research findings and highlights of the Israel-Arab conflict in the conclusion.

A detailed background of the conflict

The conflicting issues and the conflicting parties involved in the Israel-Arab conflict are multiple, and the stages in which the situation has evolved and developed into the current manifestation are longstanding and complex. As the current war between Israel and Hamas grinds to a bloody close, it remains unclear whether this military action will be sufficiently decisive to prevent future terrorist attacks in the region, but it is reasonable to suggest that the fundamental calculus that is involved will remain relatively unchanged. Indeed, the historical record is replete with instances of violent conflicts between Israel and their Arab neighbors based on various biblical claims to Zion as the Jewish homeland promised them by the Almighty on High.

According to the biblical account, Gods granting of Israel as a homeland to the Israelites occurred over an extended period through a combination of divine promise, corresponding military conquest, and subsequent settlement, a pattern that remains salient today. In Genesis 12:7, God first covenanted with Abraham to give the land of Canaan to his descendants: On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram [Abraham] and said, To your descendants I give this land, from the Wadi of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates the land of the Kenites, Kenizzites, Kadmonites, Hittites, Perizzites, Rephaites, Amorites, Canaanites, Girgashites and Jebusites.

This covenant was reaffirmed with Abrahams son Isaac and grandson Jacob, later called Israel. After the Exodus from Egypt around 1446 BCE, God declared Canaan as the rightful homeland for the Israelites led by Moses and Joshua. This is clearly powerful stuff. Whenever people firmly believe that God has made them promises, including giving them a homeland, it is little wonder that they will hold onto it, kicking and screaming forever, and this has certainly been the case with the Promised Land. As noted above in Genesis, though, this Promised Land from God had defined geographic boundaries that have important historical implications for modern Israel and its Arab neighbors.

The occupations of the Promised Lands occurred gradually through military campaigns over hundreds of years, with the Israelites destroying Canaanite fortresses and settling the regions allotted to each of the 12 tribes. After exile in Babylon, Jewish leaders like Ezra and Nehemiah reestablished Israelite control in the late 6th century BCE. As a result, Gods covenant with Abraham was eventually fulfilled as the Israelites acquired and populated Canaan through prolonged phases of divinely sanctioned conquest, allocation, exile, and return.

In other words, the granting of Israel to the Jewish people their homeland spanned several generations rather than happening instantaneously, but there is some indication of the immediacy of the proclamation in the Hebrew Bible. For example, according to the Hebrew Bible, God promised the land of Canaan to Abraham and his descendants as an everlasting possession (Genesis 17:8). This divine promise was the basis for a covenant establishing the land as the Jewish homeland. Following the Exodus from Egypt, the Israelites conquered Canaan under leaders such as Joshua, dividing the territory among their twelve tribes. Thereafter, following several periods of exile, Jewish leaders Ezra and Nehemiah later led waves of Israelites to restore Jewish sovereignty. Therefore, from Israels perspective, these biblical accounts firmly ground Jewish claims to the land in ancient history.

The Bible also describes episodes of military conflict as the Israelites warred with Canaanites and neighboring groups to take control of areas God had granted them. There were also later power struggles between Jewish and Gentile rulers battling for regional supremacy. Centuries of Diaspora followed, with Jewish attachment to the land persisting through prayers and scripture. The dispersal of Jews from ancient Israel to foreign lands known as the diaspora began in the 6th century BCE when the Babylonian conquest forced a mass exile to Mesopotamia (Feller 2005).

Though some Jews returned after Persias takeover, many remained in diaspora communities across the Middle East and Mediterranean. Subsequent failed revolts against Roman rule in 70 CE and 135 CE precipitated an even larger exodus of Jews banished from their homeland. Significant populations spread around the region, laying the foundations for worldwide Jewish diaspora. Exile from the traditional land, synagogue establishment, cultural adaptation abroad, and retaining identity defined the early diaspora experience. Some groups, such as the Ashkenazi Jews, multiplied over centuries, while others faded; however, the imprint of Babylonian nd Roman expulsions persists as the definitive onset of the millennia-long global dispersion of Jews originating from ancient Israel.

After World War II, the modern state of Israel was established again as the Jewish homeland. After experiencing the horrors of the Holocaust, the Zionist movement gained increasing international support for reestablishing a Jewish national homeland in the Biblical lands of Israel. In 1947, the UN General Assembly passed a partition plan officially dividing the British Mandate territory into Jewish and Arab states (Ben-Dror 2013).

In May 1948, Israel declared independence as the reborn Jewish state with David Ben-Gurion as Prime Minister. Immediately after, Israel was recognized by the United States and Soviet Union despite Arab opposition. Mass immigration of Jewish refugees followed from around the world. Israel gained additional land in the 1948 Arab-Israeli war that erupted after its declaration of statehood. Despite some territorial losses, Israel emerged from the war having established itself as an independent nation-state and renewed homeland for the Jewish people in the ancient lands of their ancestors. Though its boundaries, politics, and society have continued to evolve, Israels founding as a modern state represented the dramatic rebirth of the Jewish homeland in the Biblical Promised Land after millennia of Diaspora (Ben-Dror 2013).

This revived ancestral claims to the area, now replete with other inhabitants. Competing nationalist groups like Palestinians also assert ties to the same lands described in the Bible. With sacred lands at stake and influenced by ancient enmities, struggles for control of the region continue. While simplified, the biblical sources provide founding context for attachments now colliding. The texts outsized role adds a theological and historical dimension to the regions current conflicts between Israel and its Arab neighbors, as well as internecine wars involving Muslim countries in the Middle East such as Iran and Turkey which are not Arab but which share a common heritage and religion.

Most recently, the Arab-Israeli conflict emerged in the early 20th century with the rise of competing Jewish Zionist and Arab Palestinian nationalist movements, both claiming the land of Israel/Palestine as their rightful homeland. As a direct result, tensions escalated under British control and erupted into communal violence. The pivotal events of Israels 1948 founding war solidified the territorial dispute, with 700,000 Palestinians being displaced in the process. Subsequent wars in 1967 expanded Israel's borders but left Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza, and Golan Heights under prolonged Israeli occupation (Gelber 2021). These expulsions followed hard on the heels of the original Nakba (Arabic for catastrophe) which memorializes the forced displacement and dispossession of Palestinian Arabs during the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948. This event resulted in the creation of a large population of Palestinian refugees. Not surprisingly, the Nakba is a deeply significant and sensitive aspect of the Israel-Arab conflict and has shaped the historical and political landscape of the region with many observers suggesting the current situation in Gaza is yet another Nakba.

From the Israeli perspective, the uneasy and uncertain period before the 1967 war created a sense of grave threat and abandonment, as Arab nations collectively tightened the siege while the international community seemingly did nothing in response. Moreover, following Israels upset victory against its Arab foes in the Six-Day War, this sense of distrust in other states was reinforced and fueled further disregard for external criticism of its actions in defense of its national sovereignty (Gelber 2021).

In addition, and with echoes that still reverberate today, censure of Israels post-war position, even by allies, further angered the Israeli public. Indeed, many Israelis then and now -- argue that the government should act solely in the nations interests rather than heed condemnations by opponents or friends abroad given the nations precarious position. Consequently, Israels defensive reaction distanced foreign governments, though not yet all Western public opinion. Nevertheless, the British ambassador described Israels response to criticism after the war as xenophobic. In sum, from the Israeli point of view, the Six Day War heightened disillusionment with the morality of other states, bolstering nationalist attitudes favoring self-interest over international approval (Gelber 2021).

These issues assumed new importance and relevance when Palestinian nationalist groups launched violent resistance campaigns seeking to reclaim lost lands. Limited self-governance was established under the Oslo peace process in the 1990s, but final status negotiations failed to materialize a two-state resolution (Morrison 2020). In this context, the Oslo process refers to the 1990s peace negotiations between Israel and the PLO leading to the Oslo Accords. Secret talks in Norway produced the historic 1993 Oslo I agreement for Palestinian self-rule in Gaza and the West Bank. This established the Palestinian Authority, with Yasser Arafat as its first president. Oslo II in 1995 detailed further Israeli withdrawals and interim governance arrangements. The accords marked the PLO's recognition of Israel and renunciation of terror, while Israel recognized the PLO as representative of the Palestinian people (Yarhi-Milo 2013).

The original intent of the peace process was for Oslo to establish the framework for permanent status negotiations on core issues like borders, Jerusalem, refugees, and settlements; however, the 1995 assassination of Israeli PM Yitzhak Rabin derailed momentum. Subsequent summits failed to reach a final deal. While establishing Palestinian self-governance, Oslos vision of two states living peacefully side-by-side remained unfulfilled. Continued violence and collapse of high-level talks ensured the interim became permanent. In fact, Israel maintained control over disputed areas, while Palestinians remained an occupied and stateless people. Despite fluctuations in conflict intensity, the fundamental clash between Jewish and Palestinian nationalism, each laying claim to the same contested land, has perpetuated the dispute over the decades unto the present day.

Today, the Arab world in general and the Palestinian people in particular find themselves in a predicament that is based, in part, on their adamant refusal to accept the terms of the 1947 UN Partition Plan that would have granted Palestine both land and statehood. Rather than accept these terms which Israel grudgingly agreed to, Syria, Jordan, Egypt and other Arab states elected to attack Israel in an erstwhile early attempt to eradicate the fledging nation from the global map once and for all (The Palestinian Catastrophe 2022). Not surprisingly, this millenia-old conflict has been the focus on an enormous amount of scholarship over the centuries, and numerous academicians and political analysts have weighed in concerning the underlying theories and concepts that underpin the conflict as discussed further below.

Identification of concepts and theories that underpin the conflict

The concepts and theories that underpin the conflict are multiple. At its core, the Arab-Israeli conflict is fueled by competing nationalist ideologies that emerged in the early 20th century - Zionism calling for a Jewish homeland in the region and Palestinian nationalism....

…the PLO and against this backdrop, even the most talented and optimistic conflict resolution specialists may despair, but all hope is not lost nor is the current status quo carved in stone. Absent God himself appearing before all of the belligerents and commanding them to lay down their arms and make peace with each other because they were all so very, very wrong about His messages to humankind, though, other monumental steps are needed to achieve lasting results to the Israel-Arab conflict.

The case can be made that the countless complexities of this conflict can be resolved through a fundamental sea change in mindsets of the belligerents who are involved. In Abraham Lincolns first inaugural address, delivered on March 4, 1861, as the United States was on the brink of the Civil War, the president appealed to the divided American people for unity and peace in order to save the Republic, expressing hope that the nation would appeal to the better angels of our nature rather than descending into the conflict that ultimately unfolded as captured in the quote below:

We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature (emphasis added).

Clearly, the better angels of our nature are desperately needed today, and the possibility exists that with the right mix of conflict resolution strategies, the Israel-Arab conflict may be resolved through a two-state or other solution that remains on the horizon. Future political and religious leaders may eventually snap out of their millenia-old thrall and recognize the harsh realities of the situation in the Middle East and take the concrete steps that are necessary to conform to Lincolns sage and timely advice. Unless and until that eventuality transpires, the best the international community can hope for and expect is to minimize the carnage using the most aggressive, evidence-based conflict resolution strategies that are available.

Conclusion

Complex problems demand complex solutions, but the Israel-Arab conflict stands out as being one of the most challenging situations to confront humankind in history. Future generations may look back on this turbulent period in history and shake their collective heads in wonderment that the straightforward solutions that finally solved the Israel-Arab conflict were not apparent to all in 2023. Even this comparatively rosy eventuality, though, assumes that humankind will survive multiple other existential threats it currently faces, and even the severity of the Israel-Arab conflict pales in comparison when viewed from this larger perspective. Millenia-old problems are not solved overnight, of course, and the Israel-Arab conflict is no exception.

The research showed that the modern Arab-Israeli conflict emerged in the early 20th century from competing Zionist and Palestinian nationalist movements, both claiming ancestral ties to the contested land. Israel's founding precipitated Palestinian displacement and regional wars expanded its borders, leaving Palestinians stateless under occupation. Though the Oslo Accords temporarily brought some Palestinian self-rule, final peace agreements never materialized. Clashing nationalism remains at the conflicts core, with neither side relinquishing absolutist territorial claims or attachment to the same land. Proposed two-state solutions face immense hurdles around borders, settlements, Jerusalem and refugees. With political will lacking, the status quo prevails despite frustrations on the part of the international community. Transformational approaches such as humanization, however, offer some hope to gradually shift the firmly entrenched attitudes of the belligerents. Fundamentally incompatible nationalist ideologies asserting exclusive rights to the same sacred homeland, though, continue to drive the otherwise-intractable dispute at present.

The research was also consistent in showing that forging a lasting solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict is an immensely complex undertaking, marked by deeply rooted historical, religious, and geopolitical complexities. One of the primary challenges lies in the competing national narratives and historical grievances of both Israelis and Palestinians, each asserting legitimate claims to the same land. The status of Jerusalem, the right of return for Palestinian refugees, and the establishment of secure and recognized borders are contentious issues that have eluded resolution. Additionally, the influence of external actors and regional dynamics further complicates the process, with various nations and groups having vested interests and historical involvement in the conflict. The ongoing security concerns, including the threat of terrorism and regional instability, pose significant obstacles to building trust and fostering meaningful dialogue. The absence of mutual recognition and the lack of a framework that addresses the core concerns of both parties continue to hinder the prospect of a comprehensive and lasting resolution. Achieving a lasting solution necessitates a delicate balance of diplomacy, compromise, and a genuine commitment from all stakeholders, including the international community, to address the multifaceted dimensions of the conflict and work towards a sustainable peace.

Finally, and as noted throughout, addressing the profound complexities of the Israel-Arab conflict requires a comprehensive and multifaceted approach that is firmly grounded in evidence-based conflict resolution strategies. Central to this effort is the promotion of direct negotiations and sustained dialogue between Israeli and Palestinian political and religious leaders, fostering an environment conducive to mutual understanding and compromise. In addition, international mediation, facilitated by neutral third-party entities, can also play a crucial role in bridging the cavernous gaps that currently exist between the belligerents and in guiding the negotiation process unto completion. Advocacy for a two-state solution remains a key strategy for this purpose, emphasizing the establishment of a secure Israel alongside a viable and independent Palestinian state with mutually negotiated borders. Ensuring comprehensive security arrangements, addressing economic development, and implementing humanitarian measures contribute to building trust and creating incentives for cooperation. Regional involvement is essential, engaging neighboring nations to address broader dynamics that influence the conflict. Cultural and educational initiatives, alongside reconciliation and transitional justice mechanisms, can foster understanding and healing among affected populations. A united front from the international community, emphasizing adherence to international law and a commitment to a just and lasting resolution, provides vital support for the peace process. Ultimately, a successful outcome depends on sustained political will,…