A timeline of the conflict which has its roots in the late 19th century.
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has its roots in the late 19th century when Jews fleeing anti-Semitism in Russia and central Europe began emigrating to Palestine.
Here is a timeline:
A Jewish homeland promised
In 1917, during World War I, the British capture Palestine from the Ottomans and, in the Balfour Declaration of November 2, promise the Jews a “national home” there.
Opposition from the Palestinians first emerges at a congress in Jerusalem in 1919.
In 1922, the League of Nations sets out the obligations of a British mandate in Palestine, including securing “establishment of the Jewish national home”, the future Israel.
Britain crushes the great Arab revolt in Palestine of 1936-1939.
Palestine split
Palestine is partitioned into Jewish and Arab states under United Nations Resolution 181, approved in November 1947. Jerusalem is put under international control.
In the split, the West Bank including east Jerusalem goes to Jordan and the Gaza Strip to Egypt.
The state of Israel is finally created on May 14, 1948, provoking an eight-month war with Arab states.
More than 400 Palestinian villages are razed by Israeli forces and around 760,000 Palestinian refugees flee to the West Bank, Gaza and neighbouring Arab countries.
The Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) is created in 1964.
Occupation and war
In the Six-Day War in June 1967, Israel defeats Egypt, Jordan and Syria and occupies east Jerusalem, the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and the Golan Heights.
Jewish settlement of the occupied territories starts shortly afterwards and continues in the West Bank, east Jerusalem and the Golan Heights today.
Arab states attack Israel on October 6, 1973, the Jewish holy day of Yom Kippur. Israel repels the attack.
Israel invades civil war-wracked Lebanon on June 6, 1982, to attack Palestinian militants after initially sending in its forces in 1978. Israeli-backed Lebanese militias kill hundreds in Palestinian refugee camps in Beirut. Israeli troops remain in southern Lebanon until May 2000.
The first intifada, or Palestinian uprising against Israeli rule, rages from 1987 to 1993.
Abortive peace process
In 1993, Israel and the PLO sign a declaration on principles for Palestinian autonomy after six months of secret negotiations in Oslo, launching an abortive peace process.
PLO leader Yasser Arafat returns to Gaza in July 1994 to create the Palestinian Authority. Self-rule is established for the first time in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank town of Jericho.
In September 2000, right-wing Israeli opposition leader and future prime minister Ariel Sharon visits the Al-Aqsa mosque compound in east Jerusalem, a site holy to Muslims and Jews, who refer to it as the Temple Mount, sparking the first clashes of the second intifada.
Responding to a wave of suicide bombings, Israel in 2002 invades the West Bank in its largest operation there since the 1967 war.
Moderate Mahmud Abbas takes over the leadership of the Palestinian Authority in January 2005, after the death of Arafat.
The last Israeli forces leave Gaza after a 38-year occupation in September 2005.
Palestinian factions
In June 2007, Islamist movement Hamas seizes control of the Gaza Strip after ferocious fighting with its rivals in the Fatah faction led by Abbas, who remains in power in the West Bank.
In 2014, Israel launches a new operation against Gaza in an attempt to stop rocket fire and to destroy tunnels from the Palestinian territory.
Hamas and Fatah sign a reconciliation accord in October 2017 aimed at ending a decade of discord.
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Steve Ovett, the famous British middle-distance athlete, won the 800-metres gold medal at the Moscow Olympics of 1980. Just a few days later, he was about to win a 5,000-metres race at London’s Crystal Palace. Known for his burst of acceleration on the home stretch, he had supreme confidence in his ability to out-sprint rivals. With the final 100 metres remaining,
[wptelegram-join-channel link=”https://t.me/s/upsctree” text=”Join @upsctree on Telegram”]Ovett waved to the crowd and raised a hand in triumph. But he had celebrated a bit too early. At the finishing line, Ireland’s John Treacy edged past Ovett. For those few moments, Ovett had lost his sense of reality and ignored the possibility of a negative event.
This analogy works well for the India story and our policy failures , including during the ongoing covid pandemic. While we have never been as well prepared or had significant successes in terms of growth stability as Ovett did in his illustrious running career, we tend to celebrate too early. Indeed, we have done so many times before.
It is as if we’re convinced that India is destined for greater heights, come what may, and so we never run through the finish line. Do we and our policymakers suffer from a collective optimism bias, which, as the Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman once wrote, “may well be the most significant of the cognitive biases”? The optimism bias arises from mistaken beliefs which form expectations that are better than the reality. It makes us underestimate chances of a negative outcome and ignore warnings repeatedly.
The Indian economy had a dream run for five years from 2003-04 to 2007-08, with an average annual growth rate of around 9%. Many believed that India was on its way to clocking consistent double-digit growth and comparisons with China were rife. It was conveniently overlooked that this output expansion had come mainly came from a few sectors: automobiles, telecom and business services.
Indians were made to believe that we could sprint without high-quality education, healthcare, infrastructure or banking sectors, which form the backbone of any stable economy. The plan was to build them as we went along, but then in the euphoria of short-term success, it got lost.
India’s exports of goods grew from $20 billion in 1990-91 to over $310 billion in 2019-20. Looking at these absolute figures it would seem as if India has arrived on the world stage. However, India’s share of global trade has moved up only marginally. Even now, the country accounts for less than 2% of the world’s goods exports.
More importantly, hidden behind this performance was the role played by one sector that should have never made it to India’s list of exports—refined petroleum. The share of refined petroleum exports in India’s goods exports increased from 1.4% in 1996-97 to over 18% in 2011-12.
An import-intensive sector with low labour intensity, exports of refined petroleum zoomed because of the then policy regime of a retail price ceiling on petroleum products in the domestic market. While we have done well in the export of services, our share is still less than 4% of world exports.
India seemed to emerge from the 2008 global financial crisis relatively unscathed. But, a temporary demand push had played a role in the revival—the incomes of many households, both rural and urban, had shot up. Fiscal stimulus to the rural economy and implementation of the Sixth Pay Commission scales had led to the salaries of around 20% of organized-sector employees jumping up. We celebrated, but once again, neither did we resolve the crisis brewing elsewhere in India’s banking sector, nor did we improve our capacity for healthcare or quality education.
Employment saw little economy-wide growth in our boom years. Manufacturing jobs, if anything, shrank. But we continued to celebrate. Youth flocked to low-productivity service-sector jobs, such as those in hotels and restaurants, security and other services. The dependence on such jobs on one hand and high-skilled services on the other was bound to make Indian society more unequal.
And then, there is agriculture, an elephant in the room. If and when farm-sector reforms get implemented, celebrations would once again be premature. The vast majority of India’s farmers have small plots of land, and though these farms are at least as productive as larger ones, net absolute incomes from small plots can only be meagre.
A further rise in farm productivity and consequent increase in supply, if not matched by a demand rise, especially with access to export markets, would result in downward pressure on market prices for farm produce and a further decline in the net incomes of small farmers.
We should learn from what John Treacy did right. He didn’t give up, and pushed for the finish line like it was his only chance at winning. Treacy had years of long-distance practice. The same goes for our economy. A long grind is required to build up its base before we can win and celebrate. And Ovett did not blame anyone for his loss. We play the blame game. Everyone else, right from China and the US to ‘greedy corporates’, seems to be responsible for our failures.
We have lowered absolute poverty levels and had technology-based successes like Aadhaar and digital access to public services. But there are no short cuts to good quality and adequate healthcare and education services. We must remain optimistic but stay firmly away from the optimism bias.
In the end, it is not about how we start, but how we finish. The disastrous second wave of covid and our inability to manage it is a ghastly reminder of this fact.