Today in Focus Israel-Gaza warHow a contested history feeds the Israel-Palestine conflict
More ways to listenMon 23 Oct 2023 03.00 BST Last modified on Mon 23 Oct 2023 11.16 BST
Certain dates are seared into the minds of those who have tried to untangle the decades-long Israel-Palestine conflict, be it 1917, 1947, 1967, 1973 – and now 2023. Chris McGreal reports on an escalating war that is only understandable by looking to the past
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Everything about the roots of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is contested, from the events themselves to how far back in history to find a starting point. Some begin with the Romans. Others the late 19th-century Jewish migration to what was then the Ottoman empire and the rise of Zionism.
But the start for many is the UN’s vote in 1947 to partition land in the British mandate of Palestine into two states – one Jewish, one Arab – after the destruction of much of European Jewry in the Holocaust.
As Chris McGreal tells Nosheen Iqbal, the roots of this conflict continue to inflame it. The horrific attacks by Hamas that killed more than 1,300 Israelis will go down as one of the worst days in Israel’s history. Now, with the Israel Defence Forces pounding Gaza with airstrikes and preparing a ground invasion, the next phase of the conflict promises to be more deadly than any that have gone before.
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