Israel and the Arab world: eight wars and four agreements

Israel, which today signed two agreements in Washington to normalize relations with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain since its inception in 1948, has waged eight major wars with Arab countries.

These are the first two agreements concluded by Israel with the Gulf states. And they come decades after the Hebrew state signed peace accords with two other Arab countries, namely Egypt (1979) and Jordan (1994).

Wars
On May 14, 1948, three years after the end of World War II, David Ben-Gurion announced the creation of the State of Israel over part of Palestine.

The next day, Arab armies – Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon and Iraq – waged war against the new state, which won in 1949. More than 760,000 Palestinians were forced into mass displacement or expelled from their homes. homes.

On June 5, 1967, Israel launched the so-called “Six Day War” against Egypt, Syria and Jordan and captured East Jerusalem, the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, the heights. from the Syrian Golan and Egyptian Sinai.

On October 6, 1973, Egypt and Syria attacked Israel in Sinai and the Golan Heights.

Peace with Egypt
In November 1977, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat was the first Arab head of state to visit Israel since its founding.

This historic trip paved the way for the Camp David Accords of September 1978, which culminated on March 26, 1979, with the signing, under US auspices, of the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty, the first ever between Israel and the United States. one of his neighbors. .

Invasion of Lebanon
On June 6, 1982, Israeli forces invaded Lebanon and besieged Beirut, demanding that the PLO, led by Yasser Arafat, leave the country.

Israeli forces occupied southern Lebanon until 2000. After Hezbollah captured Israeli soldiers in 2006, Israel launched a devastating attack on Lebanon and waged a fierce war with the party.

Peace with Jordan
On October 26, 1994, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Jordanian Prime Minister Abd al-Salam Majali signed a peace treaty, ending 46 years of war.

The treaty, signed in the presence of US President Bill Clinton, ensured Israel’s security on its longest borders and laid the foundation for economic cooperation.

Two uprisings and the Oslo accords
In December 1987, Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip launched the “Stone Revolution,” the first intifada against the Israeli occupation.

On September 13, 1993, after six months of secret negotiations in Oslo, Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization signed agreements on Palestinian autonomy in Washington in a ceremony that saw a historic handshake between Yasser Arafat and Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. Yasser Arafat returned to the occupied territories and established the Palestinian Authority there.

In November 1995, Rabin was assassinated by a Jewish extremist opposed to the peace process. After the failed Israeli-Palestinian negotiations at Camp David and a controversial September 2000 visit by then-right-wing opposition leader Ariel Sharon, to the Al-Aqsa Mosque square in Jerusalem, a second Intifada broke out.

The Israeli army reoccupied the main cities of the West Bank and then, in March 2002, launched the largest attack on the area since 1967.

In September 2005, Israel unilaterally withdrew from the Gaza Strip and imposed a blockade on it after the Islamist movement Hamas took control of the strip in 2007. In July 2014, Israel launched an operation against the Strip. Gaza.

Trump’s plan
On December 6, 2017, US President Donald # Trump recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, angering Palestinians and condemnation from the international community.

On May 14, 2018, the United States moved its embassy to Jerusalem. Then, in March 2019, the US president signed an executive order recognizing Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights.

On January 28, 2020, a controversial plan was unveiled which included Israel’s annexation of parts of the occupied West Bank, while Arab countries warned that the annexation would cause “major conflict.”

Standardization with Bahrain and UAE
On August 13, Trump announced the signing of a “historic peace accord” between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, under which the Jewish state agreed to suspend the continued annexation of Palestinian land.

The UAE confirmed that the agreement provided for “the end of Israel’s annexation of Palestinian lands.” But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu confirmed that annexation was only “postponed”.

On September 11, Trump announced that Bahrain and Israel would normalize their relations.
The Palestinians described the two agreements as a “stab in the back”.