Bible Study Blog - Israel and Palestine: Understanding the Roots of the Conflict

November 01, 2023

Bible Study Blog - Israel and Palestine: Understanding the Roots of the Conflict

What’s going on in Gaza?

Since 2005, Israel has maintained a blockade of the Gaza Strip, an entity that’s only six miles wide and thirteen miles long, yet home to nearly 2.5 million people.
Hamas, a political and militant group, won democratic elections in 2006 to govern Gaza. Hamas seeks nothing less than the total eradication of the State of Israel and the establishment of an Islamic society within Palestine.
Much of Hamas’s funding come from Qatar, Turkey, and especially, Iran. Iran is Hamas’s chief patron, providing money, weapons, and military training.

What’s going on in the West Bank?

In 1974, the Gush Emunim (Block of the Faithful) movement formed to promote Jewish religious settlements on the West Bank, believing that Jewish control of land was given by divine right, and that settlements improve the security of the Jewish people.
In the 1978 Camp David Accords, Israel pledges to expand Palestinian self-government in the West Bank and Gaza.
Under the 1994 Oslo Accords, Israel withdraws from Jericho in the West Bank and Gaza, allowing Yasser Arafat to set up the Palestinian National Authority.
In June 2002, Israel constructs barriers in and around the West Bank following a series of Palestinian suicide bombings in March.
The 2003 Roadmap to Peace between the United States, European Union, Russia, and United Nations proposes an independent Palestinian state. Israel and Palestinian National Authority both accepted plan, which requires freeze on West Bank Jewish settlements and an end to attacks on Israelis. Right-wing Israeli government officials immediately rejected the plan, and the expansion of established settlements continues.
In February of 2017, Parliament passes a law which retroactively legalizes dozens of Jewish settlements built on private Palestinian land in the West Bank. Later in June, work begins on the first new Jewish settlement in the West Bank for 25 years.
In November 2019, the United States says it no longer considers Israeli settlements on the West Bank to be illegal.
Under the 2020 Abraham Accords, signed by the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and the United States, Israel agrees to halt the construction of settlements in the West Bank. However, settlements continue to be constructed to this day.