by Carmine Stabile –
In recent days, a strong geo-international earthquake with its epicenter in Palestine has brought winds of war back to the Middle East. The Israeli-Palestinian borders reflect the problem of the current conflict. The Palestinian etymology associated with the “British Mandate” illustrates Palestine as the geographical area that includes: the State of Israel, the West Bank (West Bank) and the Gaza Strip. While according to modern etymology, Palestine is geographically divided into two states. On the one hand the “Jewish state of Israel” and on the other hand the “Arab Palestinian state” which currently includes the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and East Jerusalem (capital of Palestine) and host to the three major monotheistic religions: Judaism , Christianity and Islam.
To better understand the ongoing war dynamics, it is necessary to break down the geographical boundaries of the areas involved.
Israel.
The Israeli state under the administration of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is bordered to the north by Lebanon, to the northeast by Syria, to the east by Jordan and the West Bank (Palestinian border), to the southwest by Egypt and the Gaza Strip (Palestinian border), and the Red Sea to the south (Palestinian border). While to the west, the borders are washed by the Mediterranean Sea which make the Jewish state a triangular crossroads between Europe, Africa and Asia.
Gaza Strip.
It is an exclave of the Palestinian territory barricaded between Israel and Egypt, where approximately 1.4 million Palestinians live. The exclave is an “isolated territory” from the State to which it belongs, geographically located in a foreign State. The political plane is currently under the control of Hamas which manages the governmental sphere. Hamas is a resistance movement, classified as an Islamist “Palestinian political and paramilitary organisation”. In this case Islam is associated with a political vision that differs from religious canons. When we talk about Islam, we are referring to plurality. There are many of them and they are often in conflict with each other, trying to highlight their “Islamist fundamentalism”. The geopolitical vision of global powers remains in conflict over the conception of Hamas. The EU, OAS, USA, Canada and Japan consider it a terrorist organization as a whole. While other states such as the UK, Australia, New Zealand and Paraguay consider only the military sphere to be terrorism and not the political sphere.
West Bank.
It covers the largest portion of Palestinian territory. It is also called the “West Bank” due to its location on the western bank of the Jordan River and extends to the city of Jerusalem. The West Bank head of state is Maḥmūd ʿAbbās also known as Abu Mazen.
The roots of the conflict span centuries of history. The focal point of the crisis emerged on May 14, 1948. On that date, the then Israeli Prime Minister David Ben Gurion officially proclaimed the birth of the new Israeli state. The proclamation of the state triggered an irrepressible mechanism of conflicts. On the same day, Syrian, Jordanian, Egyptian and Iraqi reprisals began to besiege Israel. The Jewish counteroffensive was immediate. The Israelis began to occupy the Palestinian territories. The Israeli siege led the Palestinians to the establishment of political movements for the liberation of Palestine. In fact, in 1964, the PLO (Palestine Liberation Organization) was established with the aim of giving a voice to the Palestinian people.
The conflict entered the international scene in the 1990s. In 1993, Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, head of the PLO, and the then Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin signed the “Oslo Accords” at the White House, under the supervision of American head of state Bill Clinton. These agreements determined: Israel’s right to exist, renouncing the use of violence for the creation of a Palestinian state. The whole thing turned out to be a failure. The failure of the “Oslo Accords” led to the signing of the “Oslo II Accords” in 1995. With these agreements the West Bank was divided into three zones: zone A, zone B and zone C. Zone A under Palestinian control; Zone B under joint Israeli-Palestinian control and Zone C under Israeli control. In summary, the “Oslo II agreements” proved to be strategic for Israel, which was entrusted with control of the main access routes to the region.
In conclusion, it can be noted that the conflicts taking place in unstable areas of the globe highlight the same degree of criticality: “the claim of the same territory by two peoples”. The same criticality can be found in the current Russian-Ukrainian conflict.
