The ground of Israel is regarded as the cradle of the Jewish people, whose ancient history was marked by the alternation of external dominations and exoduses, then by dispersion (diaspora) following the Roman conquest. The modern history goes back to the beginnings of the immigration Zionist, which worked the identity of the country. It was marked, since the proclamation of the State, by the conflict relationship between Israel and its Arab neighbors.

The first immigration Zionist

The medium of the XIX E century sees the intrusion of Western progress in the declining Ottoman Empire. In Palestine, in addition to the modernization of the communications, it takes two forms: missions of biblical and archaeological studies; the arrival of Jewish immigrants of Europe, who create into 1861 the first districts out of the walls of Jerusalem, where they will be majority since 1880.

The political Zionism, aspiration with the return of the ground Jews of Israel, develops in response to the persistence of discrimination in Western Europe and especially to persecutions in Eastern Europe. It will appear by several waves of immigration successive, known as aliyah (“gone up”), which start with the creation of Petah Tikvaen in 1878, first Jewish agricultural community. This movement, which develops following the pogroms in Russia, runs up soon against the hostility of the Othoman administration.

After the creation of the world Organization Zionist by Theodor Herzl, with the congress of Basle in 1897, and the failure of the revolution in Russia in 1905, the immigrants of the second aliyah, inspired by the socialist ideology, create the first kibbutzes on grounds bought by the Funds Jewish national. In 1914.85 000 Jews are installed in Palestine.

Palestine under British mandate

During the First World War, the British endeavor to release the Middle East of the Othoman supervision. The Allenby general enters to Jerusalem in December 1917 in charge of a unit understanding three battalions of the Jewish Legion, whereas, by the declaration of Arthur Balfour, Great Britain comes to proclaim its support for the foundation of a “Jewish national hearth” in Palestine.

In July 1922, the League of Nations entrusts mandate to Great Britain on the whole of Palestine. Transjordanie, allotted to the emir hachémite Abdallah, is detached shortly after from it. Jewish immigration continues with the third and the fourth aliyah (1919-1923 and 1924-1930). The fifth aliyah (1933-1939), started by the arrival of the Nazis to the power in Germany, carries the manpower of the Jewish community of Palestine, Yishouv, with 400 ' 000 people in 1936. Many clashes oppose the Jewish settlers and the Arab population; the power agent, trapped in contradictory promises, is unable to alleviate them.

The creation of the State of Israel

During the Second world war, Shoah makes perish more than five million Jews in the concentration camps, which accentuates, in spite of the restrictive measures of the British, the arrival of Jewish populations in Palestine.

The idea of a division between a Jewish State and an Arab State is ratified on on November 29th, 1947 by a resolution of the General meeting of UNO, to which tries to face the Council of the Arab League. On May 14th, 1948, takes care of the expiry of the British mandate, the Jewish National council proclaims the independence of Israel; David Ben Gourion becomes about it the first Prime Minister.

The new State is invaded at once by the armies Egyptian woman, Jordanian, Iraqi, Syrian and Lebanese, which are pushed back at the cost of heavy losses: this first Israeli-Arab war ends in the fixing of the borders along the lines of armistice of 1949 and at the beginning of the majority of the Arab population towards the Gaza Strip, under Egyptian administration, or towards the West Bank, attached to Jordan.  

The new State, at the same time as it set up its institutions, had to deal with the surge of immigrants, particularly those from Africa and from Asia. The Jewish population doubles in four years to reach 1 ' 300 ' 000 people in 1952. In October 1956, Israel launches a campaign in the Sinai against the Egyptian army, in.liaison.with the Franco-British ones which carries out a forwarding against the nationalization of Suez Canal by Gamal Abdel Nasser. The country profits then from a consolidation period and economic growth, in spite of the attacks of Palestinian groups; those will constitute Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).  

Wars of the Six-Jours (1967) and Kippour (1973)

In May 1967, Egypt requires the departure of the units of UNO of the Sinai, transfers from important military forces and imposes to it the blockade of the strait of Tiran. Jordan, Syria and Iraq mass their troops east of the Jordan. On June 5th, the Israeli army, carried out by the Moshe Dayan general, starts a preventive attack. After a lightning war, Israel occupies the Sinai, the Gaza Strip, Jerusalem-Is, the West Bank and the heights of Golan. The Hebrew State is then in charge of an increased territory that it placed under military administration (except Jerusalem reunified).

The first Jewish establishments take place with the strategic sites. Israel places under its supervision the Arab population. In November is adopted resolution 242 of the Safety advice of UNO: reference document for any attempt at payment of the conflict, it aims at establishing an equitable and lasting peace, ensuring of the borders sure and recognized in all the States of the area.

Two other wars will follow: the “war of attrition” carried out by Egypt of April 1969 to August 1970 on the face of the Sinai; the war of Kippour launched by Egypt and Syria on on October 6th, 1973, day of Yom Kippour, starting point of the first oil crisis started by the producing Arab oil countries.

The peace separated with Egypt (1979)

The elections of 1977 carry to the power Likoud, block of parties liberal line. The Prime Minister, Menahem Begin, answer positively on the initiative of peace engaged by the Egyptian president Anouar el-Sadate, successor of Nasser, who goes to Jerusalem in November 1977. The negotiations carried out on the initiative of Jimmy Carter US president lead to the agreements of Camp David.

The signature of a peace treaty in March 1979 led to the progressive restitution of the Sinai in Egypt. But Likoud, anxious to satisfy holding them with “Large Israel”, annexes Golan (1981), launches the operation “Peace as a Galileo” (1982) to dislodge the PLO of Lebanon, and establishes Jewish settlers in the Occupied territories.

Of Intifada to a dubious peace process

From 1948 to 1973, the Israeli-Arab conflict had been primarily a confrontation between Israel and the Arab States. From the middle of the years 1970 and after the war of Kippour, this conflict gradually found its original dimension of confrontation between Jews and Palestinians. Two factors contributed to this change: the réémergence of the Palestinians like political clout (creation of the PLO in 1964, development of the groups of fedayins) and the fact that Israel was, in the occupied territories since 1967, vis-a-vis a Palestinian company which refused to be dominated and rose against the establishment of Jewish colonies.

After having annexed Golan (1981), the Israeli government directed by Menahem Begin launched a military massive onslaught to Lebanon where the PLO had its principal bases (operation “Peace as a Galileo”, in June 1982). If Yasser Arafat were driven out of Beirut, the war did not make disappear the Palestinian question. This one was posed on the contrary with a new force, as from December 1987, in the West Bank and in Gaza with the release of Intifada, vast protest movement against the Israeli military occupation. In the context born of the Iraqi defeat in the war of the Gulf (1991), the United States finally managed to start again a peace process intended to put definitively fine at the Israeli-Arab conflict, including in its Palestinian dimension (conference of Madrid, October 1991). Very quickly, however, this process sank. Israelis and Palestinians engaged then of the secret negotiations in Norway which led to the mutual recognition between the PLO and Israel and to the signature of a “statement of principles on the autonomy of the occupied territories” (September 1993).

This “revolution copernician” allowed the constitution on a fraction of the West Bank and Gaza Strip of an elected Palestinian Authority, equipped with certain powers. It supported also a certain bringing together between Israel and the Arab States whose most spectacular demonstration was the concluding of a peace treaty with Jordan (October 1994). However, the process of Oslo met many resistances, as well at the Palestinians (islamist) as at the Israelis (colonists, right-hand side). This opposition took a dramatic turning with the assassination of the Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin by an Israeli religious fanatic, on on November 4th, 1995, which weakened a peace process however quite committed (agreement of Taba, known as also Oslo II) but what made more dubious the return to the business of Likoud after the election of Benyamin Netanyahou in May 1996 at the expense of Shimon Peres, and the resumption of the establishment of the colonies of settlement in the Palestinian zones. The beginning of the year 1998 was marked by the failure of the attempts at negotiations initiated once again by the United States to start again the peace process in the Middle East and by the firmness of the policy of Benjamin Netanyahou, who authorized the construction of new residences intended to shelter Jewish settlers in Jerusalem-Is and in the West Bank.

Thus, after one period of lethargy under Benyamin Netanyahou (1996-1999), the victory of Ehoud Barak let hope that the peace process would find a new dash. The top of Camp David (July 2000) convened under the leadership of the United States had as an ambition to arrive to a final payment of the conflict. Its failure had the opposite effect: it started again it. At the end of September, after a visit discussed of Ariel Sharon on the esplanade of the mosques, did an Intifada news start again, which, in the three years space, was going to make nearly 3? 500 deaths (including 2? 612 Palestinian and 822 Israelis), seriously to affect the regional economies and to lead to a formidable political regression.

After the failure of new retries of the peace process, companies in September 2001 between the president of the Palestinian Authority and the chief of the Israeli diplomacy, at the conclusion one year punctuated by the Palestinian attack-suicides and marked by the terrorist acts perpetrated in the United States, the continuation of violence made, once again, move back the prospects for a durable agreement. In March 2002, after the international mediations had been balanced they also by successive failures, UNO adopted, at the time of a historical vote, the resolution 1397, mentioning for the first time, “the vision of an area in which two States, Israel and Palestine, live side by side inside recognized and sure borders”. This resolution prevented neither the Palestinian terrorist acts however nor the perpetuation of the occupation of the territories by the Israeli army.

In June 2004, however, the government approved the principle of the disengagement plan of the occupied territories by the dismantling of Jewish colonies which are established there. This plan implies the withdrawal of the 21 colonies of the Gaza Strip (approximately 8500 people), while maintaining the presence Israeli in the West Bank (approximately 230' 000 people), and this in spite of the sedentary transfer to the Palestinian forces of the towns of Tulkarem and Jericho.

But the opposition, in the rows of Likoud, to the retirement scheme of Gaza, returns the position of Ariel Sharon cantilever with the traditional line of its party privileging the force: in November 2005, it decides to leave Likoud to found a new centrist party, Kadima, and convenes anticipated legislative elections for March 2006.

However, in January 2006, whereas Sharon, victim of a serious cerebral accident, leave the vacant power, a new period of uncertainty opens in all Middle East, accentuated by the unexpected victory of Hamas at the time them elections aiming at renewing the Palestinian Legislative council. Ehoud Olmert, Deputy Prime Minister, were appointed chief of the government by interim. Carrying a short victory with the legislative elections, marked by a historically low rate of participation (63.2 %), the party Kadima (28 seats), taken along by Ehoud Olmert, precedes the Workers party (20 seats) and the orthodoxe party Sephardic Shass (13 seats). As for Likoud, it obtains only 11 seats and sees its devoted collapse.