History UsefulNotes / ArabIsraeliConflict

In the aftermath of the Six-Day War, Egypt and Israel began what is known as the War of Attrition, lasting from 1967 to 1973. Perhaps the best way to put this would be a high-tech, high-gloss version of the tit-for-tat violence of the Intifadas. Egypt and Israel trade missiles, artillery bombardments, air raids, ground raids, etc. across the Suez Canal. This amounts to little but random destruction; its biggest impact -- besides confirming the bad blood between the countries -- is probably an Israeli artillery shell randomly killing one of Egypt's best generals while he happened to be visiting; [[ForWantOfANail his participation in the next hot war might have made a difference]], given the impact of poor generalship on the Egyptian side.

* Unlike the above mentioned ''Waltz With Bashir'', the R-rated CGI animated film ''WesternAnimation/SausageParty'' definitely plays the Arab-Israeli Conflict [[PlayedForLaughs for shits and giggles]]. A sub-plot involves a Jewish bagel and an Arab lavash arguing over who should get both sides of the aisle they're sharing. But when the main character suggests that they should make room for each other and share the aisle, [[StupidestThingIveEverHeard the lavash and the bagel start laughing.]] But by the end, when the bagel and lavash find out they're both friends with hummus, they find common ground [[spoiler:and even become a couple]].

* The graphic novel ''ComicBook/{{Palestine}}'' by JoeSacco talks about daily life in the Palestinian territories. ''ComicBook/FootnotesInGaza'' is a RashomonStyle account on a single "footnote in history", the killing of 100 Palestinian men in the town of Rafah in 1956.

[[folder: Western Animation]]

Another wild card is the disconnect between Arab populations and their leaders. For decades, demonstrations against Israel were pretty much the only tolerated expressions of political opinion in many Arab countries and leaders who were otherwise unpopular could always get their people riled up against supposed or real evils of Israel. However, both Fatah and Hamas seem to have used up their credit. There have been no elections in the West Bank or Gaza Strip since 2005 so support is hard to gauge, but given that Hamas' rise to power was mostly precipitated by the unpopularity of Fatah, there might be trouble on the horizon for the latter, no matter when elections are called again. Hamas, on the other hand, has not found many friends in Gaza with their hard-handed rule and in early 2017, there were protests in Gaza against the current Hamas government. If and when either of those two players is removed from their current power-base, the situation might totally change and anything from negotiations to a renewed round of violence might immediately follow, with even less predictable consequences in the long run.

* ''Animation/WaltzWithBashir '' - specifically focused on the 1982 war in Lebanon.
* Unlike the above mentioned ''Waltz With Bashir'', the R-rated CGI animated film ''WesternAnimation/SausageParty'' definitely plays the Arab-Israeli Conflict [[PlayedForLaughs for shits and giggles.]] A sub-plot involves a Jewish bagel and an Arab lavash arguing over who should get both sides of the aisle they're sharing. But when the main character suggests that they should make room for each other and share the aisle, [[StupidestThingIveEverHeard the lavash and the bagel start laughing.]] But by the end, when the bagel and lavash find out they're both friends with hummus, they find common ground [[spoiler:and even become a couple]].

* Unlike the above mentioned ''Animation/WaltzWithBashir'', the R-rated CGI animated film ''WesternAnimation/SausageParty'' definitely plays the Arab-Israeli Conflict [[PlayedForLaughs for shits and giggles.]] A sub-plot involves a Jewish bagel and an Arab lavash arguing over who should get both sides of the aisle they're sharing. But when the main character suggests that they should make room for each other and share the aisle, [[StupidestThingIveEverHeard the lavash and the bagel start laughing.]] But by the end, when the bagel and lavash find out they're both friends with hummus, they find common ground [[spoiler:and even become a couple]].

However, the failure to make progress by either side eventually led to turmoil, and in particular the hiccups in getting an independent Palestinian state led to frustration on the part of the Palestinians. Eventually, things came to a head, leading to:

Nasser said "ILied" and kicks out the UN Peacekeeping forces, starts making increasingly ugly noises about what should happen to the Israelis, starts cobbling together an alliance, and eventually shuts the Straits of Tiran — Israel's main waterway — marking the Rubicon at which war becomes inevitable if he does not pull back. He doesn't, and Israel makes a preemptive strike on the Egyptian, Syrian, and Jordanian Air Forces to prevent a war they could see a mile away; Egypt, Syria, Jordan, and Iraq had been massing troops for weeks (although King Hussein of Jordan had to be dragged kicking and screaming into doing so).

Egypt, Transjordan (with the British-commanded Arab Legion), Syria, Iraq, and Lebanon invaded Israel on 15 May 1948 with the stated goal of destroying the new Israeli state and restoring Palestine as an Arab state. After some initial gains, the Arabs were defeated for a variety of reasons, but not as badly as they would be in later wars: Egypt managed to get the Gaza Strip out of it, and Jordan got the West Bank and part of Jerusalem, including the Old City. The only people who can be said to have truly lost the war were the Arabs who lived in Mandatory Palestine as they lost half of the territory allotted to them by the UN partition plan to Israel. Indeed, none of the offered borders for proposed Arab/Palestinian states in future peace plans would ever be as extensive as those offered under the UN partition plan in 1947.

The actual reasons behind the Arab invasion were a bit more complicated; while there were plenty among the Islamist and/or Arab ultra-nationalist factions that wanted to wipe the Israelis from the face of the map, the Arab governments were almost all very unpopular at home — most of them on the verge of revolution — and so they stirred up resentment against the Jewish settlers in Palestine to get the people's attention off the home front. Many historians – even Arab ones – now regard this as a huge but inevitable mistake: this [[GoneHorriblyRight worked too well]], and the Arab governments found themselves [[OhCrap facing a war that they knew they were going to lose.]] At the end, the Arab governments' plans all failed utterly: within the next ten years, Egypt and Iraq both had revolutions/coups d'etat, Jordan's king was assassinated by a disgruntled Palestinian, Syria entered a ten-year period where coups happened not once but ''twice'' a year, and Lebanon had to call in the [[SemperFi United States Marines]] [[FriendlyEnemy and make a deal with the Israelis]] to avert a civil war.

* Inverted in Creator/MattRuff's [[AlternateHistory alternate history]] ''Literature/{{Mirage}}''. The United Arab States (UAS) gained independence from the Ottoman in the 19th century and was part of the Allies in defeating Hitler. The land for Israel is carved from Germany, with Israel closely allied with the UAS against terrorism from the surrounding European states.

One of the more interesting side effects of the war is how often it is used for domestic chest-thumping and PR work. Supporting pro-Israeli causes helps Western politicians to curry favor with the local Jewish constituency (especially in the US — which for a long time had a higher Jewish population than Israel, though ironically the increasingly secular nature of the American Jewish community has [[BrokenBase made it divisive]]). Likewise, the countries of the Arab and Muslim worlds have politicians and firebrands of their own who are all too happy to jump on their own anti-Israeli bandwagon for more or less the same but opposite reasons; though [[HoistByTheirOwnPetard as we will see, this has often bitten them in the rear.]] More religious officials like to curry favor with a common deity/co-religionists while not being so supportive that it pisses off the nearby Palestinian-sympathizing nations who ''do'' have the oil/the Israelis, pro-Israeli Lebanese, and the rest of the West who they need to do business with frequently (pick depending on the slant of said officials). The many Islamic countries and terrorist organizations treat the real and imagined oppression of Palestinians as a unifying rallying point, or use it as a convenient excuse to justify acts of terrorism, which then [[DramaticallyMissingThePoint exacerbates the same pressures that causes the Palestinians such grief in the first place.]]

A highly controversial topic, the conflict has deep implications and importance in modern [[UsefulNotes/TheMiddleEast Middle Eastern]] and global politics. Don't start here on the rights and wrongs of it, as this ''will'' cause drama.

-->--'''Alain de Botton'''

The Arab-Israeli conflict, in short, is a decades-long conflict between the Jewish and Arab people living on the Eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea. Considered one of the most intractable conflicts of the world, it is deeply rooted in many decades worth of history and will likely last well into the future.

->''"A man once jumped from the top floor of a burning house in which many members of his family had already perished. He managed to save his life; but as he was falling he hit a person standing down below and broke that person’s legs and arms. The jumping man had no choice; yet to the man with the broken limbs he was the cause of his misfortune. If both behaved rationally, they would not become enemies. The man who escaped from the blazing house, having recovered, would have tried to help and console the other sufferer; and the latter might have realized that he was the victim of circumstances over which neither of them had control. But look what happens when these people behave irrationally. The injured man blames the other for his misery and swears to make him pay for it. The other, afraid of the crippled man’s revenge, insults him, kicks him, and beats him up whenever they meet. The kicked man again swears revenge and is again punched and punished. The bitter enmity, so fortuitous at first, hardens and comes to overshadow the whole existence of both men and to poison their minds."''
-->--'''Isaac Deutscher'''

The Arab-Israeli conflict, in short, is a decades-long conflict between the Jewish and Arab people living on the Eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea. Considered one of the most intractable conflicts of the world, the conflict is deeply rooted in many decades worth of history and will likely last well into the future. A highly controversial topic, the conflict has deep implications and importance in modern Middle Eastern and global politics. Don't start here on the rights and wrongs of it, as this ''will'' cause drama.

* ''Film/TheLastKingOfScotland'' also touches on the Entebbe Incident; Nicholas Garrigan (James [=McAvoy=]'s character) uses it as his cover to leave a Uganda he finds increasingly to be a hellhole.

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[[folder:Israel and Jews]]

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To make a long story short, the results of the Yom Kippur War forced — or perhaps allowed (it's possible that Sadat had [[XanatosGambit planned the war as a win-win all along]]) — a change in Egyptian policy; with American encouragement, Egypt came to a rapprochement with Israel, culminating in the Camp David Accords of 1978 and the Israel-Egypt Peace Treaty of 1979. As a result, Egypt recognized the State of Israel, becoming the first Arab country to do so; in return, it got Sinai back in stages over TheEighties and abandoned the Soviet Union to became a major ally of the United States — with all the cash and arms that come with that status. To this day, Egypt (as a "major non-NATO ally" of the United States — a status it shares with Israel) receives annual shipments of (old and surplus) U.S. versions of most American military equipment (rather than the watered-down export versions available to most countries) and billions of dollars in U.S. aid (most of which, the [[UsefulNotes/TheArabSpring Arab Spring]] discovered,[[note]]to nobody's surprise[[/note]] went straight into the pockets of the president and his friends). So... um... yeah.

''Intifada'' means "shaking-off" or "uprising" in Arabic. Sparked by an unusually violent Israeli security action at a funeral at a West Bank refugee camp, Palestinians conducted organized resistance against the Israeli forces and authorities; while much (if not most) of the resistance is nonviolent (protests and strikes — Israeli industries had grown dependent on Palestinian labor since 1967 — proved particularly effective), there was also a great deal of guerrilla warfare, primarily with rocks, which the Israelis responded to with full gunfire. The sad tactic of [[SuicideAttack suicide bombing]] is perfected[[note]]it was pioneered by the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka[[/note]] during this period, but it doesn't see quite as much use as in other conflicts or later on. The harsh Israeli response garnered the attention of the global press, and got the Palestinians the kind of attention and recognition that they had never had before. Several important Palestinian organizations were formed during this period. Most importantly, Hamas came into existence in 1987, forming from an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood. Ironically, the Israelis had previously funded them because the Brothers historically focused on peacefully preaching to Palestinians, encouraging them to become better Muslims. Oops.

In December 2008, Israel launched a large military offensive against the Gaza strip over rocket attacks. The attack, while proving successful, also involved the use of tactics and weapons that are at best controversial, and resulted in a large number of dead noncombatants (Israel claims it's due to a combination of Palestinian fighters utilizing human shields, and Gaza being so densely populated that you can't fire off a round without hitting anyone, while the Palestinians claim deliberate targeting of civilians), with Israel going through yet another round of criticism at the UsefulNotes/UnitedNations over them. Although rocket attacks have in fact died down, those which continue are generally conducted by tiny groups even more radical than Hamas (and which Hamas is actively trying to destroy for its own reasons). The [[UsefulNotes/IsraelisWithInfraredMissiles IDF]] refers to this war as "Operation Cast Lead."

* '''Operation Protective Edge''', 2014: After ''Operation Pillar of Defense'' concluded in 2012, Hamas' government in the Gaza Strip and the Fatah government in the West Bank approached one another to create a unified Palestinian government in June of 2014. While this was happening, three Israeli teenagers were kidnapped within the West Bank, prompting Israel to accuse Hamas of orchestrating their disappearance. Hamas officials denied involvement, but congratulated whoever had kidnapped the teenagers. In response, Israel launched a massive crackdown on Palestinian neighborhoods within the West Bank. The three teens were later found dead, having been shot not long after they were taken. In response to this, Israeli citizens rioted and in the chaos seized and killed a Palestinian teenager. Israeli officials at first tried to paint the teenager as having been killed in a family dispute, suggesting he had been a homosexual and [[HomophobicHateCrime murdered for his orientation]], but the murderers were discovered and put on trial. With the crackdown in the West Bank ongoing, Hamas began launching rockets into Israeli territory — they would fire off nearly 5,000 in this campaign, but almost a fifth of them were intercepted by Israel's Iron Dome missile defense system. Israel deployed multiple army divisions into the Gaza Strip for 7 weeks, searching for rocket and weapon stockpiles while also destroying 32 tunnel networks beneath Gaza before withdrawing. The operation ended with both Israel and Hamas declaring victory — Israel claimed to have severely weakened Hamas, while Hamas claimed to have driven Israel out of the Gaza Strip.