Gaza conflict extra notes

Question 1

What does BBC news say about the Gaza conflict:

Answer 1

• The Palestinian militant group Hamas launched an unprecedented assault on Israel on 7 October, with hundreds of gunmen infiltrating communities near the Gaza Strip About 1,200 people were killed, and more than 250 were taken to Gaza as hostages, according to Israeli tallies.
• More than 33,000 Palestinians in Gaza have been killed in air and artillery strikes carried out by the Israeli military in response, Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry says.
• Britain took control of the area known as Palestine following the defeat of the Ottoman Empire, which ruled that part of the Middle East, in World War One. The land was inhabited by a Jewish minority and Arab majority, as well as other, smaller ethnic groups. To Jews Palestine was their ancestral home, but Palestinian Arabs also claimed the land and opposed the move.
• Tensions between the two peoples grew when the international community gave the UK the task of establishing a “national home” in Palestine for Jewish people. This stemmed from the Balfour Declaration of 1917, a pledge made by then Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour to Britain’s Jewish community. The declaration was enshrined in the British mandate over Palestine and endorsed by the newly-created League of Nations - forerunner of the United Nations - in 1922.
• In 1947, the UN voted for Palestine to be split into separate Jewish and Arab states, with Jerusalem becoming an international city. That plan was accepted by Jewish leaders but rejected by the Arab side and never implemented.
• In 1948, unable to solve the problem, Britain withdrew and Jewish leaders declared the creation of the State of Israel. It was intended to be a safe haven for Jews fleeing persecution, as well as a national homeland for Jews. Fighting between Jewish and Arab militias had been intensifying for months, and the day after Israel declared statehood, five Arab countries attacked.
• Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fled or were forced out of their homes in what they call Al Nakba, orthe “Catastrophe”
• In a war in 1967, Israel occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank, as well as most of the Syrian Golan Heights, Gaza and the Egyptian Sinai peninsula. Most Palestinian refugees and their descendants live in Gaza and the West Bank, as well as in neighbouring Jordan, Syria and Lebanon. Neither they nor their descendants have been allowed by Israel to return to their homes - Israel says this would overwhelm the country and threaten its existence as a Jewish state.
• Israel occupied Gaza in the 1967 war and stayed until 2005, during that time building Jewish settlements. Israel withdrew its troops and settlers in 2005, though it retained control over its airspace, shared border and shoreline. The UN still considers the territory to be occupied by Israel.
• A negotiated peace did seem possible in the early days. A series of secret talks in Norway became the Oslo peace process, forever symbolised by a ceremony on the White House lawn in 1993 presided over by President Bill Clinton. In a historic moment, the Palestinians recognised the State of Israel and Israel recognised its historical enemy, the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), as the sole representative of the Palestinian people. A self-governing Palestinian Authority was set up. Cracks soon appeared, though, with then opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu calling Oslo a mortal threat to Israel. The Israelis accelerated their project to settle Jews in the occupied Palestinian territories. The recently emerged Palestinian militant group Hamas sent suicide bombers to kill people in Israel and wreck the chances of a deal.
• The mostrecent peace plan - prepared by the USwhen Donald Trump was president - was called “the deal of the century” by Prime Minister Netanyahu, but was dismissed by the Palestinians as one-sided and never got off the ground
• Gaza is ruled by Hamas, an Islamist group which is committed to the destruction of Israel and is designated as a terrorist group by the UK and many other countries. Hamas won the Palestinians’ last elections in 2006, and seized control of Gaza the following year by ousting the rival Fatah movement of West Bank-based President Mahmoud Abbas. Since then, militants in Gaza have fought several wars with Israel, which along with Egypt has maintained a partial blockade on the strip to isolate Hamas and try to stop attacks, particularly the indiscriminate firing of rockets towards Israeli cities. Palestinians in Gaza say Israel’s restrictions and its air strikes on heavily populated areas amount to collective punishment.

Question 2

What does the guardian say about the gaza conflict:

Answer 2

• About 700,000 Palestinians were expelled or fled – about 85% of the Arab population of the territory captured by Israel – and were never allowed to return
• Arabs who remained in Israel as citizens were subject to official discrimination. They were placed under military rule for nearly two decades, which deprived them of many basic civil rights. Much of their land was expropriated and Arab Israeli communities were deliberately kept poor and underfunded
• In 1964, a coalition of Palestinian groups founded the Palestine Liberation Organisation under the leadership ofYasser Arafatto pursue armed struggle and establish an Arab state in place of Israel. The PLO drew international attention to its cause with high-profile attacks and hijackings
• In 1967Israel launched what it said was a pre-emptive defensive war against Jordan, Egypt and Syria, as they appeared to be preparing to invade. The attack caught Arab governments by surprise and saw Israel achieve rapid victories including seizing the Sinai peninsula and the Gaza Strip from Egypt, the Golan Heights from Syria, and the West Bank and East Jerusalem from Jordan. The six-day war was a spectacular military success for Israel. Its capture of all of Jerusalem and newly acquired control over the biblical lands called Judea and Samaria opened the way to the construction of Jewish settlements in the West Bank, which became central to the conflict. Israel placed the Arab population of the West Bank under military rule, which is enforced to this day.
• Peace negotiations sputtered along until the failure of Bill Clinton’s attempts to broker a final deal at Camp David in 2000, which contributed tothe outbreak of the second intifada.The uprising was markedly different from the first intifada because of widespread suicide bombings against Israeli civilians launched by Hamas and other groups, and the scale of Israeli military retaliation. By the time the uprising ended in 2005, more than 3,000 Palestinians and 1,000 Israelis were dead.

Question 3

What does the global conflict tracker say:

Answer 3

• Almost two million Gazans—more than 85 percent of the population—have[fled]their homes since October 2023
• They hold foreign and Israeli hostages
• The partition plan was called resolution 181
• Six years later, in what is referred to as the Yom Kippur War or the October War, Egypt and Syria launched [a surprise two-front attack]on Israel to regain their lost territory; the conflict did not result in significant gains for Egypt, Israel, or Syria, but Egyptian President Anwar al-Sadat declared the war a victory for Egypt as it allowed Egypt and Syria to [negotiate over previously ceded territory] Finally, in 1979, following a series of cease-fires and peace negotiations, representatives from Egypt and Israel signed the [Camp David Accords], a peace treaty that ended the thirty-year conflict between Egypt and Israel
• In March of 2018, Israeli troops[killed]183 Palestinians and wounded 6,000 others after some Palestinians stormed the perimeter fence between the Gaza Strip and Israel and threw rocks during an otherwise peaceful demonstration. Just months later, Hamas militants fired over one hundred rockets into Israel, and Israel [responded] with strikes on more than fifty targets in Gaza during a twenty-four-hour flare-up

Question 4

What do parliament documents say about the connection between the UK and gaza conflict:

Answer 4

• Tell MAMA (the Measuring Anti-Muslim Attacks reporting and monitoring service) report evidence that rising tensions in the Middle East can lead to an increase in both antisemitic and anti-Muslim incidents in the UK
• On 4 November 2023, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, said across the world “Islamophobic and anti-Semitic harassment, attacks and hate speech have multiplied, including in the context of protests relating to the [Israel-Hamas] conflict”.
• On 13 December, the CST provisionally recorded at least 2,093 antisemitic incidents across the UK since 7 October. It said this was the “highest ever total reported to CST across a 68-day period”
• In October, the Government announced £3 million in additional funding to the CST to provide more protection to Jewish communities.
• As of Wednesday 13 December, the CST reported in the period following the Hamas attack of October 7, there were 2,093 antisemitic incidents recorded across the UK. This compares with 330 recorded in the same period in 2022, an increase of 534%.

Question 5

What do further official documents say:

Answer 5

• Among Jews in the UK, 71% have family living in Israel and almost 90% have visited the country at least once, making the October 7 attacks feel deeply personal.
• 56% of Jews in the UK said they felt such criticism during the May 2021 conflict in Gaza made them feel Jews were unwelcome in the UK, and 73% said they felt non-Jews held them responsible in some way for Israel’s actions
• 12% of adults across Great Britain harbour deep, ideological hatred towards Israel, and 56% hold at least one anti-Israel idea that a majority of Jews in the UK would characterise as antisemitic