israeli palestinian conflict essay topics

80 Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Essay Topic Ideas & Examples

🏆 best israeli-palestinian conflict topic ideas & essay examples, 🎓 good research topics about israeli-palestinian conflict, ⭐ simple & easy israeli-palestinian conflict essay titles, ❓ research questions for israeli-palestinian conflict.

• Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: Key Issues at Stake First of all, discussing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it should be mentioned that one of the most significant issues as well as one of the most critical reasons behind this conflict is historically caused by the […]
• Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: Policy Recommendation Here the problem is each perceives the existence of the other as a state as a threat to its existence. In such a situation what is the way of providing a solution to the conflict […] We will write a custom essay specifically for you by our professional experts 808 writers online Learn More
• The Role of the USA in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict So, it is important to investigate the history of these two countries and try to find the root of the conflict.”The Arab-Israeli conflict, the central issue of which is the status of a territory known […]
• The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: Origins and Evolution Therefore, the clutch for the Jewish people and the condition of Israel has been due to the concentrations of oil and to guarantee an ally is there in the area.
• Martyrdom Culture in Israeli-Palestinian Conflict The culture of martyrdom is a threat to the peace process within the Middle East. The presence of organizations and institutions that encourage and tutor suicide bombing activities presents one of the obstacles to the […]
• Arab National Identity in Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Since this is the issue of the national identity of the Arabian people, it is reasonable that the Arabians defend their piece of homeland and history.
• The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: Theory and Analysis In their analysis of applying the negotiation theory to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Kteily, Saguy, Sidanius, and Taylor note that the role of such an arbitrator should be allocated to an international community.
• Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: Optimistic Prognosis The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is one of the clashes in the Middle East that has continued to exist despite several attempts to resolve it. The conflict owes its origin to the relocation of the Jews to […]
• The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: History and Concept Therefore, most people view this conflict as the epicentre of the wider and long running conflict between Arabs and the Israel state.
• Battle of the Holy Land: The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict This essay documents the chronology of the current Israeli-Palestinian conflict through an overview of the major events that led to the feud. The scope of the essay also examines the justification of the rationales for […]
• Asian Studies: The Palestine-Israel Conflict Origin The situation can be viewed either through the lens of the nation, which has been deprived of its land unfairly, or the nation who settled in the land of Palestine long ago and, therefore, has […]
• Conflict Between Palestine and Israel The purpose of this study is to analyze the various reasons that led to the conflicts between the Israelis and the Palestinians and the various consequences that the residents of these two states have had […]
• Israeli-Palestinian Conflict vs. Apartheid in South Africa One of the first points that should be made is that ethnic conflicts were present in the history of many nations, but many countries were able to overcome them at least to some degree, for […]
• The Palestine-Israel War: History, Conflict, Causes, Summary, & Facts The intense desire to re-establish the Jewish nation by the Jewish population was sparked by the underlying beliefs of the Jewish religion with of them being repatriation to Zion.
• History of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict The struggle is extensive, and the reference is also used in mentioning of the prior stages of the same dispute, involving Jewish and Zionist yishuv and the Arab populace in Palestine under Ottoman or British […]
• The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: Old Complications, New Problems
• Israeli Palestinian Conflict: Political Solution Only Way to End ‘Senseless’ Cycles of Violence
• The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Supported by the United States and Russia
• Decision Framing and Support for Concessions in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
• Normative Power Europe Meets the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
• Theory and Evidence From the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
• Violence and Control in Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza
• The Israeli Palestinian Conflict: A Long and Storied History
• Mediation and the Transformation of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
• Israeli-Palestinian Conflict and the Presidential Election
• The European Union in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: Can the EU Break the Cycle of Violence?
• Stones Against the Iron Fist, Terror Within the Nation: Alternating Structures of Violence and Cultural Identity in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
• Fair Division, Adjusted Winner Procedure (AW), and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
• Different Strategies for Resolving the Israeli Palestinian Conflict
• Israeli Palestinian Conflict: What the World Can Do to End the Israel-Palestine Conflict
• The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Explored in the Documentary “Budrus” by Julia Bachas
• Sabotaging the Peace: The Politics of Extremist Violence in Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
• Coming Too Late? The EU’s Mixed Approaches to Transforming the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
• The Major Negative Consequences of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict on the Poor
• Israeli-Palestinian Conflict and Pan-Islamic Terrorism in the Middle East
• The Truth About the Israeli-Palestinian Conflictun’s
• Jihadist Groups Exploiting the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
• The Three Major Events of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
• Israeli Palestinian Conflict: The Conflict Since the Seventeenth Century
• State Terrorism in the Arab-Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
• The Two Main Issues in the Current Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
• Employment Restrictions and Political Violence in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
• Attack When the World Is Not Watching? U.S. News and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
• Religion and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
• Israeli-Palestinian Conflict With Neighboring Countries: Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza
• Looking Past the Hatred of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: Barriers to Peace
• Israeli Palestinian Conflict: Brief History of the Conflict in the Middle East
• Youth Unemployment, Terrorism and Political Violence, Evidence From the Israeli Palestinian Conflict
• Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: Risk of ‘Deadly Escalation’ in Violence, Without Decisive Action
• The Alternative Truth Behind the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict and Using Manipulation to Survive
• Israeli Palestinian Conflict: Causes, Consequences, Portents
• The Israeli Palestinian Conflict Between Islam and Judaism
• The Origin and History of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
• Ethnic Group Conflict: The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
• The Israeli Palestinian Conflict and the Jewish Movement
• What Are the Main Issues of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict?
• What Started the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict?
• What Is the Question of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict?
• What Is the Three Major Israeli-Palestinian Conflict in Modern Times?
• What Is the Two-State Solution to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict?
• What Is the Relationship Between the Country in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict?
• Which Issue Presents a Significant Obstacle to Settling the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict?
• When Did the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict End?
• Which Directly Led to the First Armed Israeli-Palestinian Conflict?
• How Much Land Has Israel Taken From Palestine in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict?
• How the Division of Palestine in 1947 Led to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict?
• Did Israel Steal Palestine’s Land in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict?
• What Events Led to the Dispute in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict?
• What Are the Two Main Issues in the Current Israeli-Palestinian Conflict?
• What Is Us Policy on the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict?
• What Is the Main Reason for the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict?
• Is the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict a Fair and Accurate Way of Framing the Issue?
• Which Are the EU’s Mixed Approaches to Transforming the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict?
• What Is the Connection Between the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict and Pan-Islamic Terrorism?
• What Is Brief History of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict?
• Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: What Should Be Done?
• What Is the Primary Reason for the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict?
• What Is the Actual Reason for the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict?
• Is the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Still Happening in 2022?
• What Is the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict?
• Chicago (A-D)
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112 Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Essay Topic Ideas & Examples

Inside This Article

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is one of the most enduring and complex conflicts in the world today. With deep historical roots and competing narratives, finding a resolution to this conflict has proven to be incredibly challenging. If you are studying this conflict and need some essay topic ideas, look no further. Here are 112 Israeli-Palestinian conflict essay topic ideas and examples to inspire your writing:

• The origins of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
• The role of religion in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
• The impact of colonialism on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
• The role of the United Nations in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
• The Oslo Accords and their impact on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
• The role of the international community in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
• The impact of Israeli settlements on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
• The impact of Palestinian terrorism on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
• The impact of Israeli military actions on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
• The impact of the media on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
• The impact of social media on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
• The impact of education on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
• The impact of nationalism on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
• The impact of globalization on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
• The impact of the Arab-Israeli conflict on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
• The impact of the Palestinian diaspora on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
• The impact of the Israeli diaspora on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
• The impact of the Palestinian Authority on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
• The impact of Hamas on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
• The impact of Fatah on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
• The impact of the Palestinian Liberation Organization on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
• The impact of the Israeli government on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
• The impact of Israeli political parties on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
• The impact of Israeli public opinion on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
• The impact of Palestinian public opinion on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
• The impact of international law on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
• The impact of human rights on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
• The impact of economic factors on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
• The impact of social factors on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
• The impact of psychological factors on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
• The impact of historical memory on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
• The impact of cultural factors on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
• The impact of gender on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
• The impact of ethnic identity on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
• The impact of religious identity on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
• The impact of political identity on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
• The impact of territorial disputes on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
• The impact of water resources on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
• The impact of natural resources on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
• The impact of borders on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
• The impact of refugees on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
• The impact of human rights violations on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
• The impact of international aid on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
• The impact of peace negotiations on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
• The impact of armed conflict on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
• The impact of nonviolent resistance on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
• The impact of international organizations on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
• The impact of religious leaders on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
• The impact of political leaders on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
• The impact of grassroots movements on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
• The impact of cultural exchange on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
• The impact of education exchange on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
• The impact of economic exchange on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
• The impact of political exchange on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
• The impact of social exchange on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
• The impact of environmental factors on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
• The impact of climate change on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
• The impact of natural disasters on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
• The impact of technology on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
• The impact of cyber warfare on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
• The impact of surveillance on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
• The impact of propaganda on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
• The impact of censorship on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
• The impact of media on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
• The impact of art on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
• The impact of literature on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
• The impact of music on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
• The impact of film on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
• The impact of photography on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
• The impact of architecture on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
• The impact of sports on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
• The impact of tourism on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
• The impact of trade on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
• The impact of investment on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
• The impact of foreign policy on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
• The impact of diplomacy on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
• The impact of military strategy on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
• The impact of intelligence operations on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
• The impact of counterterrorism on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
• The impact of border security on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
• The impact of peacekeeping on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
• The impact of humanitarian aid on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
• The impact of development assistance on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
• The impact of foreign aid on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
• The impact of economic sanctions on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
• The impact of arms sales on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
• The impact of arms control on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
• The impact of military training on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
• The impact of military assistance on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
• The impact of intelligence sharing on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
• The impact of military intervention on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
• The impact of peacekeeping operations on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
• The impact of conflict resolution on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
• The impact of peacebuilding on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
• The impact of reconciliation on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
• The impact of truth and reconciliation commissions on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
• The impact of transitional justice on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
• The impact of international criminal tribunals on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
• The impact of human rights organizations on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
• The impact of non-governmental organizations on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
• The impact of civil society on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
• The impact of social movements on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
• The impact of political parties on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
• The impact of religious organizations on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
• The impact of educational institutions on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
• The impact of media organizations on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
• The impact of cultural organizations on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
• The impact of economic institutions on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
• The impact of international institutions on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict

These essay topic ideas and examples are just a starting point for your research and writing. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a multifaceted and deeply entrenched conflict, and exploring it from different angles can provide valuable insights and perspectives. Whether you are studying history, politics, international relations, sociology, or any other related field, there are endless possibilities for exploring this complex and contentious conflict. Good luck with your research and writing!

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Israel and Palestine: a complete guide to the crisis

A compendium of answers about the roots of the conflict, what is happening now and some of the parties involved

• Israel-Hamas war – live updates

Occupied territories, two-state solution, apartheid, peace process, proscribed terrorist organisations, the Nakba, proxy militias, disproportionate force. The decades-long crisis in Israel and Palestine has gripped the world but it has a tangled history that can feel overwhelming – and terminology that many find confusing.

Below are Guardian explainer articles that aim to answer the deeper questions and give historical context, as well as provide some simple definitions.

What are the roots of the Israel-Palestine conflict?

Newcomers should start here: a short history of the dispute in the Holy Land that the world has repeatedly failed to address. Read the full article

Gaza: who lives there and why it has been blockaded for so long

A narrow slice of land on the Mediterranean Sea, Gaza is inhabited by approximately 2.3 million Palestinians. They have lived under occupation for decades. Human Rights Watch describes Gaza as an “open-air prison”.

Read the full article

What happened in first few days and what led to the current war?

Leaving history behind, this explainer was written the day after the 7 October Hamas attack on Israeli communities just outside the Gaza frontier.

Information was still emerging but it was clear that militants were deliberately killing civilians as well as Israeli soldiers during the onslaught. Read the full article

Who are the hostages taken by Hamas from southern Israel?

Scores of hostages were taken to Gaza by militants. The vast majority of those remain captive, although several have been freed under secret deals. The breakdown of civilians and military hostages is not clear.

For a full explanation of what happened in the first week of the war, read this piece: Seven days of terror that shook the world and changed the Middle East Read the full article

What are Israel’s aims in launching Gaza ground invasion?

Israel launched its ground invasion. The urban warfare operation is likely to be lengthy and fraught with danger for its military and for Palestinian civilians. The operation’s specific goals remain uncertain. Read the full article

What is Hamas, the militant group that rules Gaza?

Several militant groups operate in Gaza, chief among them Hamas, an armed Islamist group that has ruled inside the blockaded territory since 2007. Read the full article

What is Palestinian Islamic Jihad and what is its relationship with Hamas?

The second largest armed group in Gaza, which sometimes works with Hamas, is the Islamic Jihad Movement in Palestine. It is considered one of the most extreme and uncompromising Palestinian armed factions. Read the full article

How Iran uses proxy forces across the region to strike Israel and US

Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad are considered to be Iranian proxies – groups that receive support from and are influenced by Iran, the arch-enemy of Israel. Read the full article

What is Hezbollah and how will it influence the Israel-Hamas war?

Hezbollah, the Lebanese political and militant group, is Iran’s most prominent proxy movement. The group grew in influence during the Israeli occupation of Lebanon and is now a major political force. Many fear the hatred born out of the Gaza war will push Hezbollah and Israel to enter a new war. Read the full article

‘From the river to the sea’: where does the slogan come from and what does it mean?

The slogan is used by Palestinians and Israelis and is open to an array of interpretations, from the genocidal to the democratic. Read the full article

Is the two-state solution the answer to the crisis?

The bloodiest fighting for decades has revived an option once thought dead as the last hope for peace. But how it would look and whether the will to achieve it exists remain unclear.

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Guest Essay

There Is a Solution to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

By Tzipi Livni

Ms. Livni is a former Israeli vice prime minister, minister of foreign affairs and justice minister. She was the chief negotiator in the last two rounds of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

TEL AVIV — The first meetings of peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority back in 2007 were very emotional.

Each of us — I, as Israel’s chief negotiator, and Ahmed Qurei, known as Abu Ala, the former Palestinian prime minister — tried to convince the other who has more rights to the land: the Jewish people or the Palestinians.

Unsurprisingly, we left these sessions frustrated and unconvinced. After two such meetings, we agreed that these discussions would lead us nowhere and that any peace agreement would not determine which narrative prevailed, and instead we should focus only on how to establish a peaceful future.

The argument over historical narratives hasn’t changed. It won’t. Those on both sides that insist on forcing their narrative on the other side, or turning the conflict into a religious war, cannot make the compromises needed for peace. This is true also for those from the international community supporting one side and denying the rights of the other. This is destructive and only strengthens extremists.

Peace based on the vision of two states for two peoples gives an answer to the national aspirations of both the Jewish people and the Palestinians and requires compromises by both.

The solution of a Jewish state and an Arab state has actually existed for some 75 years. It was laid out by the United Nations in 1947 as a just solution to the conflict between Jews (including my own parents) and Arabs who already lived between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.

National conflicts cannot be resolved by wars and violence, but only by a political resolution, leadership and compromise. A religious conflict is not a conflict over rights, but a fight against the right of others to live by their faith. For religious ideologists, there is no compromise.

The past two weeks were a wake-up call. The message is not only that conflict is unsustainable but also that the very nature of the conflict is turning into a religious one. That religious element has seeped into Israel itself and turned into violence between the Israeli citizens — Arabs and Jews — within Israeli cities.

We cannot and should not cede the floor to religious extremists.

The cease-fire in Gaza provides a window of time we must use to change the long-term reality. An essential decision is to return to the vision of two states for two people, to strengthen the pragmatic forces and weaken the extremists and end the terror.

Hamas is a radical Islamic terror organization that is fighting not to establish a Palestinian state but against the existence of Jewish “infidels” living in Israel.

In 2006 the so-called Quartet — the United States, the United Nations, the European Union and Russia — set forward parameters for Hamas that included acceptance of previous peace agreements between Israel and the Palestinians, commitment to nonviolence and recognition of Israel. Hamas refused.

These parameters were published after Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip, uprooted the settlements and pulled out its military forces, and Hamas won the Palestinian elections. Had Hamas adopted these principles, the lives of the residents of the Gaza Strip might today look different, and Gaza could flourish. But for Hamas, ending the conflict is something to which it will never agree.

Without accepting these conditions, there’s no hope for peace with Hamas, therefore we cannot, and should not, give it legitimacy.

When one looks at any conflict from afar, it is only natural to identify with the weaker side. But there is no doubt, as President Biden rightfully expressed, that a country has the right to defend itself. In this case, we must defend ourselves against terror by a group that does not accept our very existence. Criticizing any government policy is legitimate (I myself was a political opponent of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu), but denying the right of a country to defend its citizens is not.

We must cooperate and support everything that strengthens pragmatism and weakens extremists. This seems so obvious as to appear basic. And yet the U.S.-Israeli policy in the past few years was completely the opposite. The Trump administration supported efforts of the Israeli government to move toward annexation of land. Had all those efforts come to pass, we would have reached the point of no return. The land would no longer be divisible, and the political future of two states would have been closed to us forever. Further, this policy weakened and delegitimized the Palestinian Authority and included cutting off financial support.

Indeed, the check on rampant expansion came from what would once have been a fantastical source: The Gulf states’ condition for normalization with Israel, through the Abraham Accords, was that Israel take annexation off the table. With Mr. Biden’s inauguration in January, the vision of a two-state solution supported by the United States has made a comeback. The statements of Mr. Biden and his secretary of state, Antony Blinken, send a message of hope to the pragmatic forces in the region.

The problem is that reaching two states has also never seemed farther away. That’s not for lack of effort, though the attempts to reach the finish line have always fallen short, including most recently in 2014, when the United States proposed parameters for negotiation in accordance with two states for two peoples.

This last missed opportunity and other political trends in Israel and the Palestinian Authority may lead to an understanding that it is a dream that is impossible to fulfill, and frankly if I had another idea how to end the conflict, I would have adopted it. The violence of the past two weeks with Hamas and within Israel gave all of us a taste of what one state between the river and the sea, with a violent domestic religious and national conflict, would look like. The two-state solution thus seems as important as ever.

Even if peace is not around the corner, the point of no return is closer than ever before. We must not go there. The most important thing for now is to keep the road open. We must create a policy among the United States, regional countries and, of course, Israel and the Palestinian Authority.

After recharging our joint GPS with the two states as a destination, we need to support that goal with concrete steps, avoiding — and preventing — everything that puts obstacles on this road.

We can start by recognizing that supporting only one narrative and denying the other will lead us nowhere and will strengthen extremism on both sides. The solution must reflect both sides’ legitimate rights, aspirations and interests, with compromises that allow us both to fulfill our legitimate national aspirations and live side-by-side in peace and security.

An agreement will be possible when pragmatic leaders on both sides understand that the price of not having an agreement for their people is far higher than the price of compromise.

Tzipi Livni is a former Israeli vice prime minister, minister of foreign affairs and justice minister. She was the chief negotiator in the last two rounds of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips . And here’s our email: [email protected] .

Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook , Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram .

What’s the Israel-Palestine conflict about? A simple guide

It’s killed tens of thousands of people and displaced millions. And its future lies in its past. We break it down.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has claimed tens of thousands of lives and displaced many millions of people and has its roots in a colonial act carried out more than a century ago.

With Israel declaring war on the Gaza Strip after an unprecedented attack by the armed Palestinian group Hamas on Saturday, the world’s eyes are again sharply focused on what might come next.

Keep reading

From hubris to humiliation: the 10 hours that shocked israel, fears of a ground invasion of gaza grow as israel vows ‘mighty vengeance’, ‘my voice is our lifeline’: gaza journalist and family amid israel bombing.

Hamas fighters have killed more than 800 Israelis in assaults on multiple towns in southern Israel. In response, Israel has launched a bombing campaign in the Gaza Strip, killing more than 500 Palestinians. It has mobilised troops along the Gaza border, apparently in preparation for a ground attack. And on Monday, it announced a “total blockade” of the Gaza Strip, stopping the supply of food, fuel and other essential commodities to the already besieged enclave in an act that under international law amounts to a war crime.

But what unfolds in the coming days and weeks has its seed in history.

For decades, Western media outlets, academics, military experts and world leaders have described the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as intractable, complicated and deadlocked.

Here’s a simple guide to break down one of the world’s longest-running conflicts:

What was the Balfour Declaration?

• More than 100 years ago, on November 2, 1917, Britain’s then-foreign secretary, Arthur Balfour, wrote a letter addressed to Lionel Walter Rothschild, a figurehead of the British Jewish community.
• The letter was short – just 67 words – but its contents had a seismic effect on Palestine that is still felt to this day.
• It committed the British government to “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people” and to facilitating “the achievement of this object”. The letter is known as the Balfour Declaration .
• In essence, a European power promised the Zionist movement a country where Palestinian Arab natives made up more than 90 percent of the population.
• A British Mandate was created in 1923 and lasted until 1948. During that period, the British facilitated mass Jewish immigration – many of the new residents were fleeing Nazism in Europe – and they also faced protests and strikes. Palestinians were alarmed by their country’s changing demographics and British confiscation of their lands to be handed over to Jewish settlers.

What happened during the 1930s?

• Escalating tensions eventually led to the Arab Revolt, which lasted from 1936 to 1939.
• In April 1936, the newly formed Arab National Committee called on Palestinians to launch a general strike, withhold tax payments and boycott Jewish products to protest British colonialism and growing Jewish immigration.
• The six-month strike was brutally repressed by the British, who launched a mass arrest campaign and carried out punitive home demolitions , a practice that Israel continues to implement against Palestinians today.
• The second phase of the revolt began in late 1937 and was led by the Palestinian peasant   resistance movement, which targeted British forces and colonialism.
• By the second half of 1939, Britain had massed 30,000 troops in Palestine. Villages were bombed by air, curfews imposed, homes demolished, and administrative detentions and summary killings were widespread.
• In tandem, the British collaborated with the Jewish settler community and formed armed groups and a British-led “counterinsurgency force” of Jewish fighters named the Special Night Squads.
• Within the Yishuv, the pre-state settler community, arms were secretly imported and weapons factories established to expand the Haganah, the Jewish paramilitary that later became the core of the Israeli army.
• In those three years of revolt, 5,000 Palestinians were killed, 15,000 to 20,000 were wounded and 5,600 were imprisoned.

What was the UN partition plan?

• By 1947, the Jewish population had ballooned to 33 percent of Palestine, but they owned only 6 percent of the land.
• The United Nations adopted Resolution 181, which called for the partition of Palestine into Arab and Jewish states.
• The Palestinians rejected the plan because it allotted about 55 percent of Palestine to the Jewish state, including most of the fertile coastal region.
• At the time, the Palestinians owned 94 percent of historic Palestine and comprised 67 percent of its population.

The 1948 Nakba, or the ethnic cleansing of Palestine

• Even before the British Mandate expired on May 14, 1948, Zionist paramilitaries were already embarking on a military operation to destroy Palestinian towns and villages to expand the borders of the Zionist state that was to be born.
• In April 1948, more than 100 Palestinian men, women and children were killed in the village of Deir Yassin on the outskirts of Jerusalem.
• That set the tone for the rest of the operation, and from 1947 to 1949, more than 500 Palestinian villages, towns and cities were destroyed in what Palestinians refer to as the Nakba , or “catastrophe” in Arabic.
• An estimated 15,000 Palestinians were killed, including in dozens of massacres.
• The Zionist movement captured 78 percent of historic Palestine. The remaining 22 percent was divided into what are now the occupied West Bank and the besieged Gaza Strip.
• An estimated 750,000 Palestinians were forced out of their homes.
• Today their descendants live as six million refugees in 58 squalid camps throughout Palestine and in the neighbouring countries of Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Egypt.
• On May 15, 1948, Israel announced its establishment.
• The following day, the first Arab-Israeli war began and fighting ended in January 1949 after an armistice between Israel and Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan and Syria.
• In December 1948, the UN General Assembly passed Resolution 194, which calls for the right of return for Palestinian refugees.

The years after the Nakba

• At least 150,000 Palestinians remained in the newly created state of Israel and lived under a tightly controlled military occupation for almost 20 years before they were eventually granted Israeli citizenship.
• Egypt took over the Gaza Strip, and in 1950, Jordan began its administrative rule over the West Bank.
• In 1964, the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) was formed, and a year later, the Fatah political party was established.

The Naksa, or the Six-Day War and the settlements

• On June 5, 1967, Israel occupied the rest of historic Palestine, including the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, East Jerusalem, the Syrian Golan Heights and the Egyptian Sinai Peninsula during the Six-Day War against a coalition of Arab armies.
• For some Palestinians, this led to a second forced displacement, or Naksa, which means “setback” in Arabic.
• In December 1967, the Marxist-Leninist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine was formed. Over the next decade, a series of attacks and plane hijackings by leftist groups drew the world’s attention to the plight of the Palestinians.
• Settlement construction began in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. A two-tier system was created with Jewish settlers afforded all the rights and privileges of being Israeli citizens whereas Palestinians had to live under a military occupation that discriminated against them and barred any form of political or civic expression.

The first Intifada 1987-1993

• The first Palestinian Intifada erupted in the Gaza Strip in December 1987 after four Palestinians were killed when an Israeli truck collided with two vans carrying Palestinian workers.
• Protests spread rapidly to the West Bank with young Palestinians throwing stones at Israeli army tanks and soldiers.
• It also led to the establishment of the Hamas movement, an off-shoot of the Muslim Brotherhood that engaged in armed resistance against the Israeli occupation.
• The Israeli army’s heavy-handed response was encapsulated by the “Break their Bones” policy advocated by then-Defence Minister Yitzhak Rabin. It included summary killings, closures of universities, deportations of activists and destruction of homes.
• The Intifada was primarily carried out by young people and was directed by the Unified National Leadership of the Uprising, a coalition of Palestinian political factions committed to ending the Israeli occupation and establishing Palestinian independence.
• In 1988, the Arab League recognised the PLO as the sole representative of the Palestinian people.
• The Intifada was characterised by popular mobilisations, mass protests, civil disobedience, well-organised strikes and communal cooperatives.
• According to the Israeli human rights organisation B’Tselem, 1,070 Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces during the Intifada, including 237 children. More than 175,000 Palestinians were arrested.
• The Intifada also prompted the international community to search for a solution to the conflict.

The Oslo years and the Palestinian Authority

• The Intifada ended with the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993 and the formation of the Palestinian Authority (PA), an interim government that was granted limited self-rule in pockets of the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.
• The PLO recognised Israel on the basis of a two-state solution and effectively signed agreements that gave Israel control of 60 percent of the West Bank, and much of the territory’s land and water resources.
• The PA was supposed to make way for the first elected Palestinian government running an independent state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip with its capital in East Jerusalem, but that has never happened.
• Critics of the PA view it as a corrupt subcontractor to the Israeli occupation that collaborates closely with the Israeli military in clamping down on dissent and political activism against Israel.
• In 1995, Israel built an electronic fence and concrete wall around the Gaza Strip, snapping interactions between the split Palestinian territories.

The second Intifada

• The second Intifada began on September 28, 2000, when Likud opposition leader Ariel Sharon made a provocative visit to the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound with thousands of security forces deployed in and around the Old City of Jerusalem.
• Clashes between Palestinian protesters and Israeli forces killed five Palestinians and injured 200 over two days.
• The incident sparked a widespread armed uprising. During the Intifada, Israel caused unprecedented damage to the Palestinian economy and infrastructure.
• Israel reoccupied areas governed by the Palestinian Authority and began construction of a separation wall that along with rampant settlement construction, destroyed Palestinian livelihoods and communities.
• Settlements are illegal under international law, but over the years, hundreds of thousands of Jewish settlers have moved to colonies built on stolen Palestinian land. The space for Palestinians is shrinking as settler-only roads and infrastructure slice up the occupied West Bank, forcing Palestinian cities and towns into bantustans, the isolated enclaves for Black South Africans that the country’s former apartheid regime created.
• At the time the Oslo Accords were signed, just over 110,000 Jewish settlers lived in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem. Today, the figure is more than 700,000 living on more than 100,000 hectares (390sq miles) of land expropriated from the Palestinians.

The Palestinian division and the Gaza blockade

• PLO leader Yasser Arafat died in 2004, and a year later, the second Intifada ended, Israeli settlements in the Gaza Strip were dismantled, and Israeli soldiers and 9,000 settlers left the enclave.
• A year later, Palestinians voted in a general election for the first time.
• Hamas won a majority. However, a Fatah-Hamas civil war broke out, lasting for months, resulting in the deaths of hundreds of Palestinians.
• Hamas expelled Fatah from the Gaza Strip, and Fatah – the main party of the Palestinian Authority – resumed control of parts of the West Bank.
• In June 2007, Israel imposed a land, air and naval blockade on the Gaza Strip, accusing Hamas of “terrorism”.

The wars on the Gaza Strip

• Israel has launched four protracted military assaults on Gaza: in 2008, 2012, 2014 and 2021. Thousands of Palestinians have been killed, including many children , and tens of thousands of homes, schools and office buildings have been destroyed.
• Rebuilding has been next to impossible because the siege prevents construction materials, such as steel and cement, from reaching Gaza.
• The 2008 assault involved the use of internationally banned weaponry, such as phosphorus gas.
• In 2014, over a span of 50 days, Israel killed more than 2,100 Palestinians, including 1,462 civilians and close to 500 children.
• During the  assault , called Operation Protective Edge by the Israelis, about 11,000 Palestinians were wounded, 20,000 homes were destroyed and half a million people displaced .

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Subject Guide

To examine the conflict between Israel and Palestine, one needs to go back to the turn of the 20th century. Here are some resources that can begin to provide some background:

• Arab-Israeli Wars - Britannica
• History of the Conflict Explained - BBC
• History of the Question of Palestine - United Nations
• Israel and Palestine - Human Rights Watch
• A Look into the Long History - Time
• Whats the Israel-Palestin Conflict about? - Al Jazeera

On Saturday, October 7, 2023, Hamas, one of two Palestinian political parties and a militant movement, implemented a well-planed and multifaceted attack on Israel. Hamas is designated by some countries as a terrorist organization.

• What Is Hamas? - CNBC
• Hamas - National Counterterrorism Center
• Can Hamas, and Does It Want to, Lead the Palestinian People - Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research

CBS News, 10/11/2023

• A Dangerous New Phase in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict - Foreign Policy Research Institute
• Israel and Palestine Conflict - ACLED
• Israeli-Palestinian Conflict - Council on Foreign Relations
• How the World Leaders Have Reacted - Time
• International Institute for Strategic Studies
• Joint Statement on Israel - White House
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• United States Department of State
• Washington Institute for Near East Policy

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9 questions about the Israel-Palestine conflict you were too embarrassed to ask

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Editor’s note, October 9, 2023: This story was last updated on July 17, 2014, and some information in it may no longer be accurate. For all of Vox’s latest coverage on Israel and Palestine, see our storystream .

Everyone has heard of the Israel-Palestine conflict . Everyone knows it's bad, that it's been going on for a long time, and that there is a lot of hatred on both sides.

But you may find yourself less clear on the hows and the whys of the conflict. Why, for example, did Israel invade the Palestinian territory of Gaza in July 2014, leading to the deaths of hundreds of Palestinian civilians, many of them children? Why did the militant Palestinian group Hamas fire rockets into civilian neighborhoods in Israel? How did this latest round of violence start in the first place — and why do they hate one another at all?

What follows are the most basic answers to your most basic questions. Giant, neon-lit disclaimer: these issues are complicated and contentious, and this is not an exhaustive or definitive account of Israel-Palestine's history or the conflict today. But it's a place to start.

1) What are Israel and Palestine?

That sounds like a very basic question but, in a sense, it's at the center of the conflict.

Israel is an officially Jewish country located in the Middle East. Palestine is a set of two physically separate, ethnically Arab and mostly Muslim territories alongside Israel: the West Bank, named for the western shore of the Jordan River, and Gaza. Those territories are not independent (more on this later). All together, Israel and the Palestinian territories are about as populous as Illinois and about half its size.

Officially, there is no internationally recognized line between Israel and Palestine; the borders are considered to be disputed, and have been for decades. So is the status of Palestine: some countries consider Palestine to be an independent state, while others (like the US) consider Palestine to be territories under Israeli occupation. Both Israelis and Palestinians have claims to the land going back centuries, but the present-day states are relatively new.

2) Why are Israelis and Palestinians fighting?

Israeli soldiers clash with Palestinian stone throwers at a checkpoint outside Jerusalem (AHMAD GHARABLI/AFP/Getty Images)

This is not, despite what you may have heard, primarily about religion. On the surface at least, it's very simple: the conflict is over who gets what land and how it is controlled. In execution, though, that gets into a lot of really thorny issues, like: Where are the borders? Can Palestinian refugees return to their former homes in present-day Israel? More on these later.

The decades-long process of resolving that conflict has created another, overlapping conflict: managing the very unpleasant Israeli-Palestinian coexistence, in which Israel has put the Palestinians under suffocating military occupation and Palestinian militant groups terrorize Israelis.

Both sides have squandered peace and perpetuated conflict, but palestinians today bear most of the suffering

Those two dimensions of the conflict are made even worse by the long, bitter, violent history between these two peoples. It's not just that there is lots of resentment and distrust; Israelis and Palestinians have such widely divergent narratives of the last 70-plus years, of what has happened and why, that even reconciling their two realities is extremely difficult. All of this makes it easier for extremists, who oppose any compromise and want to destroy or subjugate the other side entirely, to control the conversation and derail the peace process.

The peace process, by the way, has been going on for decades, but it hasn't looked at all hopeful since the breakthrough 1993 and 1995 Oslo Accords produced a glimmer of hope that has since dissipated. The conflict has settled into a terrible cycle and peace looks less possible all the time.

Something you often hear is that "both sides" are to blame for perpetuating the conflict, and there's plenty of truth to that. There has always been and remains plenty of culpability to go around, plenty of individuals and groups on both sides that squandered peace and perpetuated conflict many times over. Still, perhaps the most essential truth of the Israel-Palestine conflict today is that the conflict predominantly matters for the human suffering it causes. And while Israelis certainly suffer deeply and in great numbers, the vast majority of the conflict's toll is incurred by Palestinian civilians . Just above, as one metric of that , are the Israeli and Palestinian conflict-related deaths every month since late 2000.

3) How did this conflict start in the first place?

(Left map: Passia ; center and right maps: Philippe Rekacewicz / Le Monde Diplomatique )

The conflict has been going on since the early 1900s, when the mostly-Arab, mostly-Muslim region was part of the Ottoman Empire and, starting in 1917, a "mandate" run by the British Empire. Hundreds of thousands of Jews were moving into the area, as part of a movement called Zionism among mostly European Jews to escape persecution and establish their own state in their ancestral homeland. (Later, large numbers of Middle Eastern Jews also moved to Israel, either to escape anti-Semitic violence or because they were forcibly expelled.)

Communal violence between Jews and Arabs in British Palestine began spiraling out of control. In 1947, the United Nations approved a plan to divide British Palestine into two mostly independent countries, one for Jews called Israel and one for Arabs called Palestine. Jerusalem, holy city for Jews and Muslims, was to be a special international zone.

The plan was never implemented. Arab leaders in the region saw it as European colonial theft and, in 1948, invaded to keep Palestine unified. The Israeli forces won the 1948 war, but they pushed well beyond the UN-designated borders to claim land that was to have been part of Palestine, including the western half of Jerusalem. They also uprooted and expelled entire Palestinian communities, creating about 700,000 refugees, whose descendants now number 7 million and are still considered refugees.

The 1948 war ended with Israel roughly controlling the territory that you will see marked on today's maps as "Israel"; everything except for the West Bank and Gaza, which is where most Palestinian fled to (many also ended up in refugee camps in neighboring countries) and are today considered the Palestinian territories. The borders between Israel and Palestine have been disputed and fought over ever since. So has the status of those Palestinian refugees and the status of Jerusalem.

That's the first major dimension of the conflict: reconciling the division that opened in 1948. The second began in 1967, when Israel put those two Palestinian territories under military occupation.

4) Why is Israel occupying the Palestinian territories?

A Palestinian boy next to the Israeli wall around the town of Qalqilya (David Silverman/Getty Images)

This is a hugely important part of the conflict today, especially for Palestinians.

Israel's military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza began in 1967. Up to that point, Gaza had been (more or less) controlled by Egypt and the West Bank by Jordan. But in 1967 there was another war between Israel and its Arab neighbors, during which Israel occupied the two Palestinian territories. (Israel also took control of Syria's Golan Heights, which it annexed in 1981, and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, which it returned to Egypt in 1982.)

Israeli forces have occupied and controlled the West Bank ever since. It withdrew its occupying troops and settlers from Gaza in 2005, but maintains a full blockade of the territory, which has turned Gaza into what human rights organizations sometimes call an "open-air prison" and has pushed the unemployment rate up to 40 percent .

Israel says the occupation is necessary for security given its tiny size: to protect Israelis from Palestinian attacks and to provide a buffer from foreign invasions. But that does not explain the settlers.

Settlers are Israelis who move into the West Bank. They are widely considered to violate international law, which forbids an occupying force from moving its citizens into occupied territory. Many of the 500,000 settlers are just looking for cheap housing; most live within a few miles of the Israeli border, often in the around surrounding Jerusalem.

Others move deep into the West Bank to claim land for Jews, out of religious fervor and/or a desire to see more or all of the West Bank absorbed into Israel. While Israel officially forbids this and often evicts these settlers, many are still able to take root.

In the short term, settlers of all forms make life for Palestinians even more difficult, by forcing the Israeli government to guard them with walls or soldiers that further constrain Palestinians. In the long term, the settlers create what are sometimes called "facts on the ground": Israeli communities that blur the borders and expand land that Israel could claim for itself in any eventual peace deal.

The Israeli occupation of the West Bank is all-consuming for the Palestinians who live there, constrained by Israeli checkpoints and 20-foot walls, subject to an Israeli military justice system in which on average two children are arrested every day , stuck with an economy stifled by strict Israeli border control, and countless other indignities large and small.

5) Can we take a quick music break?

Music breaks like this are usually an opportunity to step back and appreciate the aspects of a people and culture beyond the conflict that has put them in the news. And it's true that there is much more to Israelis and Palestinians than their conflict. But music has also been a really important medium by which Israelis and Palestinians deal with and think about the conflict. The degree to which the conflict has seeped into Israel-Palestinian music is a sign of how deeply and pervasively it effects Israelis and Palestinians.

Above, from the wealth of Palestinian hip-hop is the group DAM , whose name is both an acronym for Da Arabian MCs and the Arabic verb for "to last forever." The group has been around since the late 1990s and are from the Israeli city of Lod, Israeli citizens who are part of the country's Arab minority. The Arab Israeli experience, typically one of solidarity with Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza and a sense that Arab-Israelis are far from equal in the Jewish state, comes through in their music, which is highly political and deals with themes of disenfranchisement and dispossession in the great tradition of American hip-hop.

Christiane Amanpour interviewed DAM about their music last year . Above is their song "I Don't Have Freedom," full English lyrics of which are here , from their 2007 album Dedication. Sample line: "We've been like this more than 50 years / Living as prisoners behind the bars of paragraphs /Of agreements that change nothing."

Now here is a sample of Israel's wonderful jazz scene, one of the best in the world, from the bassist and band leader Avishai Cohen . Cohen is best known in the US for his celebrated 2006 instrumental album Continuo, but let's instead listen to the song "El Hatzipor" from 2009's Aurora.

The lyrics are from an 1892 poem of the same name, meaning "To the Bird," by the Ukrainian Jewish poet Hayim Nahman Bialik. The poem ( translated here ) expresses the hopeful yearning among early European Zionists like Bialik to escape persecution in Europe and find salvation in the holy land; that it still resonates among Israelis over 100 years later is a reminder of both the tremendous hopes invested in the dream of a Jewish state, and perhaps the sense that this dream is still not secure.

6) Why is there fighting today between Israel and Gaza?

On the surface, this is just the latest round of fighting in 27 years of war between Israel and Hamas , a Palestinian militant group that formed in 1987 seeks Israel's destruction and is internationally recognized as a terrorist organization for its attacks targeting civilians — and which since 2006 has ruled Gaza. Israeli forces periodically attack Hamas and other militant groups in Gaza, typically with air strikes but in 2006 and 2009 with ground invasions.

only hamas deliberately targets civilians, but most are still palestinians killed by israeli strikes

The latest round of fighting was sparked when members of Hamas in the West Bank murdered three Israeli youths who were studying there on June 10. Though the Hamas members appear to have acted without approval from their leadership, which nonetheless praised the attack, Israel responded by arresting large numbers of Hamas personnel in the West Bank and with air strikes against the group in Gaza.

After some Israeli extremists murdered a Palestinian youth in Jerusalem and Israeli security forces cracked down on protests, compounding Palestinian outrage, Hamas and other Gaza groups launched dozens of rockets into Israel, which responded with many more air strikes. So far the fighting has killed one Israeli and 230 Palestinians ; two UN agencies have separately estimated that 70-plus percent of the fatalities are civilians. On Thursday, July 17, Israeli ground forces invaded Gaza, which Israel says is to shut down tunnels that Hamas could use to cross into Israel.

That get backs to that essential truth about the conflict today: Palestinian civilians endure the brunt of it. While Israel targets militants and Hamas targets civilians, Israel's disproportionate military strength and its willingness to target militants based in dense urban communities means that Palestinians civilians are far more likely to be killed than any other group.

But those are just the surface reasons; there's a lot more going on here as well.

7) Why does this violence keep happening?

Palestinian youth throw stones at an Israeli tank in 2003. (SAIF DAHLAH/AFP/Getty Images)

The simple version is that violence has become the status quo and that trying for peace is risky, so leaders on both ends seem to believe that managing the violence is preferable, while the Israeli and Palestinian publics show less and less interest in pressuring their leaders to take risks for peace.

Hamas's commitment to terrorism and to Israel's destruction lock Gazans into a conflict with Israel that can never be won and that produces little more than Palestinian civilian deaths. Israel's blockade on Gaza, which strangles economic life there and punishes civilians, helps produce a climate that is hospitable to extremism, and allows Hamas to nurture a belief that even if Hamas may never win, at least refusing to put down their weapons is a form of liberation.

Many Palestinians in Gaza naturally compare Hamas to Palestinian leaders in the West Bank, who have emphasized peace and compromise and negotiations — only to have been rewarded with an Israeli military occupation that shows no sign of ending and ever-expanding settlements. This is not to endorse that logic, but it is not difficult to see why some Palestinians might conclude that violent "resistance" is preferable.

That sense of Palestinian hopelessness and distrust in Israel and the peace process has been a major contributor to violence in recent years. In the early 2000s, there was also a lot of fighting between Israel and Palestinians in the West Bank. This was called the Second Intifada (uprising), and followed a less-violent Palestinian uprising against the occupation in the late 1980s. In the Second Intifada, which was the culmination of Palestinian frustration with the failure of the 1990s peace process, Palestinian militants adopted suicide bombings of Israeli buses and other forms of terror. Israel responded with a severe military crack-down. The fighting killed approximately 3,200 Palestinians and 1,100 Israelis.

A 2002 Palestinian bus bombing that killed 18 in Jerusalem (Getty Images)

It's not just Palestinians, though: many Israelis also increasingly distrust Palestinians and their leaders and see them as innately hostile to peace. In the parlance of Israel-Palestine, the expression for this attitude is, "We don't have a partner for peace." That feeling became especially deep after the Second Intifada; months of bus bombings and cafe bombings made many Israelis less supportive of peace efforts and more willing to accept or simply ignore the occupation's effects on Palestinians.

This sense of apathy has been further enabled by Israel's increasingly successful security programs, such as the Iron Dome system that shoots down Gazan rockets, which insulates many Israelis from the conflict and makes it easier to ignore. Public support for a peace deal that would grant Palestine independence, once high among Israelis, has dropped . Meanwhile, a fringe movement of right-wing Israeli extremists has become increasingly violent, particularly in the West Bank where many live as settlers, further pulling Israeli politics away from peace and thus allowing the conflict to drift.

8) How is the conflict going to end?

The Dome of the Rock (at left with gold dome) is one of the holiest sites in Islam and sits atop the ancient Temple Mount ruins, the Western Wall of which (at right) is the holiest site in Jerusalem. You can see how this would create logistical problems. (Uriel Sinai/Getty Images)

There are three ways the conflict could end. Only one of them is both viable and peaceful — the two-state solution — but it is also extremely difficult, and the more time goes on the harder it gets.

One-state solution: The first is to erase the borders and put Israelis and Palestinians together into one equal, pluralistic state, called the "one-state solution." Very few people think this could be viable for the simple reason of demographics; Arabs would very soon outnumber Jews. After generations of feeling disenfranchised and persecuted by Israel, the Arab majority would almost certainly vote to dismantle everything that makes Israel a Jewish state. Israelis, after everything they've done to finally achieve a Jewish state after thousands of years of their own persecution, would never surrender that state and willingly become a minority among a population they see as hostile.

Destruction of one side: The second way this could end is with one side outright vanquishing the other, in what would certainly be a catastrophic abuse of human rights. This is the option preferred by extremists such as Hamas and far-right Israeli settlers. In the Palestinian extremist version, Israel is abolished and replaced with a single Palestinian state; Jews become a minority, most likely replacing today's conflict with an inverse conflict. In the Israeli extremist version, Israel annexes the West Bank and Gaza entirely, either turning Palestinians into second-class citizens in the manner of apartheid South Africa or expelling them en masse.

Two-state solution: The third option is for both Israelis and Palestinians to have their own independent states; that's called the "two-state solution" and it's advocated by most everyone as the only option that would create long-term peace. But it requires working out lots of details so thorny and difficult that it's not clear if it will, or can, happen. Eventually, the conflict will have dragged on for so long that this solution will become impossible.

9) Why is it so hard to make peace?

Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, and Israeli Premier Yitzhak Rabin hold Nobel Peace Prizes won in 1994 for their 1993 Oslo Accords. A follow-on agreement in 1995 was the last major Israeli-Palestinian peace deal. (Photo by Yaakov Saar/GPO via Getty Images)

The one-state solution is hard because there is no viable, realistic version that both sides would accept. In theory, the two-state solution is great. But it poses some very difficult questions. Here are the four big ones and why they're so tough to solve. To be clear, these aren't abstract concepts but real, heavily debated issues that have sunk peace talks before:

Jerusalem : Both sides claim Jerusalem as their capital; it's also a center of Jewish and Muslim (and Christian) holy sites that are literally located physically on top of one another, in the antiquity-era walled Old City that is not at all well shaped to be divided into two countries. Making the division even tougher, Israeli communities have been building up more and more in and around the city.

West Bank borders : There's no clear agreement on where precisely to draw the borders, which roughly follow the armistice line of the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, especially since hundreds of thousands of Israeli settlers have built up suburban-style communities just on the Palestinian side of the line. This one is not actually impossible — Israel could give Palestine some land as part of "land swaps" in exchange for settler-occupied territory — but it's still hard. The more time goes on, the more settlements expand, the harder it becomes to create a viable Palestinian state.

the biggest problem of all may be time: it's running out

Refugees : This one is really hard. There are, officially, seven million Palestinian refugees, who are designated as such because their descendants fled or were expelled from what is today Israel; places like Ramla and Jaffa. Palestinians frequently ask for what they call the "right of return": permission to return to their land and live with full rights. That sounds like a no-brainer, but Israel's objection is that if they absorb seven million Palestinian returnees, then Jews will become a minority, which for the reasons explained above Israelis will never accept. There are ideas to work around the problem, like financial restitution, but no agreement on them.

Security: This is another big one. For Palestinians, security needs are simple: a sovereign Palestinian state. For Israelis, it's a bit more complicated: Israelis fear that an independent Palestine could turn hostile and ally with other Middle East states to launch the sort of invasion Israel barely survived in 1973. Maybe more plausibly, Israelis worry that Hamas would take over an independent West Bank and use it to launch attacks on Israelis, as they've done with Gaza. Any compromise would likely involve Palestinians giving up some sovereignty, for example promising permanent de-militarization or allowing an international peacekeeping force, and after years of feeling heavily abused by strong-handed Israeli forces, Palestinians are not eager about the idea of Israel having veto power over their sovereignty and security.

Those are all very difficult problems. But here's the thing: time is running out. The more that the conflict drags on, the more difficult it will be to solve any of these issues, much less all of them. That will make it harder and harder for Israel to justify keeping Gaza under blockade and the West Bank under occupation; eventually it will have to unilaterally withdraw, which the current leadership opposes, or it will have to annex the territories and become either an apartheid-style state that denies full rights to those new Palestinian citizens or abandon its Jewish state.

Meanwhile, extremism and apathy and distrust are rising on both sides. The violence of the conflict is becoming status quo, a regularly recurring event that is replacing the peace process itself as the way by which the conflict advances. It is making things worse for Israelis and Palestinians alike all the time, and unless they can break from the hatred and violence long enough to make peace, that will continue.

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Israel-Hamas War Poses Tough Questions for K-12 Leaders, Too

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The Israel-Hamas war that is roiling U.S. college campuses is also creating conflict, albeit less turbulent, in pockets of K-12 education across the country.

Some high school students have walked out to join nearby campus protests in support of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. A walkout at a New Jersey high school was postponed after pushback from local elected officials. In the District of Columbia, a high school Arab-student group has sued over alleged censorship of its pro-Palestinian club activities on campus. But there have been no reports of student encampments or occupations of any K-12 buildings.

“High schools across the country should understand that students have a right to talk about controversial issues in school, even during the school day, as long as they are not disrupting the educational process or violating the rights of other students,” said Arthur B. Spitzer, senior counsel with the American Civil Liberties Union of the District of Columbia, which is representing the Arab Student Union at Jackson-Reed High School, a public school.

Meanwhile, some Jewish students and groups allege incidents or patterns of antisemitism by their classmates or teachers and inadequate responses by school administrators.

This week, the spotlight will shine on questions of antisemitism at the K-12 level when a U.S. House education subcommittee grills leaders of three school districts.

“Jewish teachers, students, and faculty have been denied a safe learning environment and forced to contend with antisemitic agitators due to district leaders’ inaction,” Rep. Aaron Bean, R-Fla., the chairman of the subcommittee on early childhood, elementary, and secondary education, said in a statement. “This pervasive and extreme antisemitism in K-12 schools is not only alarming—it is absolutely unacceptable.”

The committee will hear from David Banks, the chancellor of the 915,000-student New York City school system; Karla Silvestre, the board president of the 160,000-student Montgomery County school district in Maryland, which is just outside the nation’s capital; and Enikia Ford Morthel, the superintendent of the 9,000-student Berkeley Unified School District in California.

Each district has had episodes of alleged antisemitic conduct since the Oct. 7 attack on Israel by Hamas. In the New York City borough of Queens, pro-Palestinian students allegedly rampaged through the halls of a high school after they learned a teacher had attended a pro-Israel rally. In Montgomery County, there have been numerous reports of schools being vandalized with antisemitic speech and symbols, including swastikas.

A federal complaint and much debate in a progressive city

As for Berkeley, two national groups have filed a lengthy complaint with the U.S. Department of Education’s office for civil rights, or OCR, alleging that school officials have not taken action to stop bullying and harassment of Jewish and Israeli students.

“Over the past four months, BUSD has knowingly allowed its K-12 campuses to become viciously hostile environments for Jewish and Israeli students,” says the Feb. 28 complaint filed by the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, in Washington, and the Anti-Defamation League, in New York City.

The 32-page complaint includes numerous detailed allegations, including that students have directed antisemitic comments to their Jewish and Israeli classmates, that teachers have organized pro-Palestinian walkouts, and that administrators ignored complaints.

On Monday, the groups filed an expanded complaint , asserting that after the February filing, the “already hostile environment … took a turn for the worse,” with violent graffiti appearing on school grounds, cyberbullying of a student whose parent spoke out against antisemitism, and other incidents.

“We’re seeing a lot of bullying and harassment at the K-12 level that seems to be at least tolerated by administrators,” Marci Miller, a senior education specialist with the Brandeis Center, said in an interview. “The perpetrators aren’t being punished.”

In the Berkeley district’s only public comment on the OCR complaint, Ford Morthel said in a March 29 community message that “we take these and all complaints very seriously.”

“I want to again affirm that BUSD schools and classrooms must be spaces that are welcoming and humanizing,” the superintendent said. “I believe that being a diverse community dedicated to Equity and Inclusion requires deep listening and ongoing reflection—curiosity, compassion, and courage. As such, we do not consider this OCR complaint as an adversarial process but rather an opportunity to further examine our practices, procedures, and policies, ensuring compliance with federal laws and that we truly are advancing the district’s mission and values.”

The OCR complaint and debates over teaching about the Israel-Hamas conflict have been a source of regular public comment at Berkeley school board meetings, with some pro-Palestinian students and teachers pushing back against charges of antisemitism.

Xaro Kaufman, a senior at Berkeley High School who identified herself as Jewish, said at a March 6 meeting for which video is posted on the district’s website, “Make no mistake, if you are currently uncomfortable with your teachers and peers being pro-Palestine, it is not because they are antisemitic. It is because your views on Israel cloud your ability to see the genocide which is being committed.”

Speaking at the same meeting, Christina Harb, a Palestinian-American teacher at Berkeley High, said: “This is a war, clearly, on Palestine’s entire existence, and a parallel war is happening right here in our district. ... A small group of very entitled parents who are uncomfortable with the reality of what’s happening, are trying to conflate the issue of Palestine with the issue of antisemitism, undermining the seriousness of both issues.”

Students walk out, or try to, in several places

Elsewhere around the country, students have engaged in walkouts to join pro-Palestinian college campus demonstrations and encampments. In Chicago, several hundred secondary school students marched to the University of Chicago on May 1 to show support for Palestinians in Gaza. A few days earlier, in Austin, Texas, several hundred high school students walked out of classes to join demonstrations at the University of Texas flagship campus.

Aaron Terr, the director of public advocacy for the Philadelphia-based Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, said the recent conflicts have been reminders to school administrators that students in public schools have First Amendment rights “that follow them into school.”

“Students in school are free to speak, hand out fliers, and wear expressive clothing, as long as it doesn’t disrupt school,” he said. “Walkouts are another matter. Schools can punish for walkouts if they substantially disrupt school or if they are in violation of school attendance policies.”

Some student groups get pre-approval for walkouts, and sometimes administrators show leniency for short-term walkouts, Terr said. It isn’t clear whether recent walkouts have led to school discipline.

At Eastern Regional High School in Voorhees Township, N.J., students were planning a walkout in support of a ceasefire late last month. But local public officials, including one who has expressed strong support for Israel, voiced concerns about the plan, including that it was scheduled at the same time as the Jewish holiday of Passover. Some walkout organizers have expressed the view that they were censored, and three students have said they were suspended after clashing with the principal over the plan.

“That example looks pretty concerning,” said FIRE’s Terr, adding that the cancellation “would implicate the First Amendment.”

Conflict over a documentary film and club activities

In the lawsuit involving the Arab Student Union at Jackson-Reed High School in Washington, the club’s members allege that administrators have kept them from holding the same kind of activities that other recognized student clubs promote.

The school barred the club from showing a documentary critical of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians, canceled the club’s Palestinian Culture Night, prohibited the students from distributing literature that depicted Palestinian cultural symbols, and barred the club from handing out stickers that read “Free Palestine,” the suit filed in federal district court alleges.

“That kind of non-disruptive communication is protected by the First Amendment inside a public high school,” said Spitzer, the ACLU lawyer representing the club. Although the club was eventually allowed to have its Palestinian Culture Night last month, the suit seeks an injunction allowing the club to hold another such night before the school year is out and to show the documentary “The Occupation of the American Mind” to any Jackson-Reed students willing to watch it at a club event, he said.

“The fact that some speech may make some people uncomfortable is not a reason to say it is not protected,” Spitzer said. “Making people who disagree with you feel bad is what the First Amendment is all about sometimes.”

A spokesperson for the District of Columbia Public Schools said the district does not comment on pending litigation.

Gretchen Brion-Meisels, a senior lecturer at the Harvard Graduate School of Education who teaches courses on youth voice, youth participation, and school culture and climate, says K-12 students who are becoming active in the debate over the Israel-Hamas conflict are seeking outlets to have intelligent discussions and share their views.

“High school students, like all students, deserve places and spaces where their voices can be heard, and also supports and structures for having complex dialogue across perspectives,” she said. “Students deserve access to the complex histories of the lands that they inhabit. Restrictions on whose histories are told, and in whose voices, undermine young people’s capacity to engage in democratic dialogue.”

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A novice’s novel ideas for resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict

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Nafees Alam is a professor in social work at Boise State University in Idaho. He wrote this column for InsideSources.com .

With an Islamic last name, I earned my doctorate from a Jewish university: Dr. Nafees Alam, class of 2019, Yeshiva University — Wurzweiler School of Social Work.

I am neither a Jewish scholar nor a scholar of Islam, but rather a citizen of the human race and a social scientist who yearns for peace in the Middle East. I have family members who are appalled that I do not side with Palestinians, and I have friends who are shocked that I do not side with Israelis.

I am willfully and gleefully ignorant of the specifics, making me minimally knowledgeable but maximally neutral. Experts have tried to resolve this conflict for centuries; perhaps it’s time for a novice’s attempt.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has so much history, for thousands of years, that the questions about who hit first, who hit most and who hit the hardest all yield different answers based on who asks and who answers.

The overwhelming amount of history between these sides makes this a unique situation where the terms of engagement may require us to look at the future and overlook the past. Both sides have kept their own scores, and both feel they are the underdogs wronged by the other. Thus, both sides believe they are rightfully entitled to what they think they are owed.

To laypeople, the Earth has no shortage of land. Still, to the religiously and culturally implicated, there is one holy land that the opposition aims to fully occupy. Moving forward in search of peace may mean intentionally not looking back to see who has had it worse and who is owed more. I’ve written on empowering people to find truce and coexist with one another. Still, I’ve also written that people are more likely to come together against a common enemy than a common cause.

Establishing the terms of engagement for resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict may begin with (a) agreeing to forward-facing blinders in negotiations and (b) introducing a common enemy against whom both sides can come together.

Forward-facing blinders may be easily negotiated, but what is someone or something that Israelis and Palestinians hate more than each other? Humans are more inclined to hate than to love, so what can Israelis and Palestinians hate together since nothing seems to be bringing them together through love?

A worldwide pandemic wasn’t the solution, nor were periods of famine, drought, or one of the longest wars in recorded human history. We know what hasn’t worked, so the danger of innovation through artificial intelligence endangering traditional values and lifestyles may be the uniting force. If both sides are in equal danger of literal or figurative extinction, could they unite?

The science-fiction analogy of an alien invasion could be the uniting force. I certainly don’t have the answer to this question, but I do know that no common cause in history has brought Israelis and Palestinians together for lasting peace in the Middle East. Introducing a significant common enemy, more significant than any from the past, may be the solution that resolves a conflict that has lasted for thousands of years.

In May 2019, I graduated from Yeshiva University and was the graduation speaker. The topic of my commencement address was freedom of thought and intellectual diversity. I spoke of how welcome I felt over six years at a Jewish university and how the principles of academic freedom created an environment for every student to find success without losing themselves.

Yeshiva prepared me with the tools necessary to take what I’ve learned and build a career in public speaking and writing, culminating in being one of the many scholars featured in the Heterodox Academy Speakers Bureau.

With an Islamic last name, I felt the love and support of a Jewish university, molding me into the scholar I have become. I only hope that such love and support can exist between Israelis and Palestinians someday.

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Israelis and Palestinians are in Separate Media Realities

Carrie Kahn

Increasingly, Israelis and Palestinians are experiencing the war in Gaza in completely different ways. Critics charge Israeli media outlets with failing to cover the extent of civilian suffering in Gaza. And Palestinian news media is accused of downplaying the level of violence committed in the October 7th attacks on Israel. We hear from news consumers and journalists on both sides. For more coverage of all sides of this conflict, go to npr.org/mideastupdates

I'm a Palestinian startup founder. I wanted to do my part for my home country, but now we have to leave.

• Mohammad Alnobani co-founded a tech startup in the West Bank in 2022.
• Six months into the Israeli-Hamas war in nearby Gaza, Alnobani and his cofounder are relocating to escape the conflict.
• Alnobani said he did not regret founding his company in his homeland and hopes to return someday.

This as-told-to essay is based on a transcribed conversation with Mohammad Alnobani, 34, who cofounded "The Middle Frame," a tech startup based in Ramallah, a city in the Palestinian Territories. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

At around 1 a.m. on October 7 , I arrived in Amman, Jordan, on the way back to my home in Jerusalem from a trip to Belfast, where I attended the One Young World Summit.

I met my CTO at the airport; they were traveling to Ramallah, a Palestinian city in the West Bank. We'd decided to travel together to the borders, which opened at 8 a.m.

We got into a bus that was supposed to move between Jordan and Israel at around 8.30 a.m. Then, we were told they were closing the borders. We started checking the news. I read that Hamas got through a fence surrounding Gaza.

I was nervous as hell — whether you're pro-Palestine or pro-Israel , once you hear a major event is happening in the region, you know what's coming next is not going to be good.

We got off the bus and went back to Amman. We didn't know what to do.

I founded a tech startup in Ramallah in 2022

I was born in Saudi Arabia but grew up in Jordan. My mom is from Nablus, a city in the West Bank, and my dad grew up in Jerusalem. I moved to Jerusalem at 16 and went to university in Ramallah. After living in Qatar and London, I moved back to Jerusalem in 2019 and set up an advertising agency with my brother in 2020, which I was a part of until January 2022.

In February 2022, I set up "The Middle Frame," a stock image platform, with my business partner Raya, a photographer I met in Boston during an entrepreneurship fellowship in 2021.

Raya told me she wanted to build a platform for authentic stock images from the Middle East and North Africa.

I knew where Raya was coming from. Back when I worked in advertising, creatives always struggled to find images that accurately represented local cultures from Arab regions on international platforms like Shutterstock and Getty Images.

Over 1,800 contributors are signed up on our platform. Photographers upload their own images, which we moderate.

The Palestinian startup scene

Our business is based in Ramallah , where Raya lives. We're both familiar with the city; it's where I went to university, and half of my family lives there. It made sense cost-wise for us to work locally and set up our business there.

The Palestinian startup community is very small. I think a lot of people around the world don't know it exists. It's very easy to get into and it felt like a good environment to find our feet.

I knew there was almost no political and economic stability in the area, but as it was my home country, I felt like I had to try and do my part. If starting a company in Ramallah could benefit the community by creating jobs and further building on the small startup scene there, we wanted to try.

We wanted to onboard Palestinian team members to give them experience in a tech startup, but we had been struggling to recruit people due to the ongoing conflict.

Myself and Raya are the only two working full-time for "The Middle Frame," but we have a part-time CTO and web developer who are both Palestinian, as well as six part-timers in Egypt.

As a stock image platform, we wanted to provide local photographers with passive income from sharing their images.

We're targeting advertising agencies and media outlets that can download our images, but since the Palestinian population and market are small, we felt there was a limitation on our growth and scalability. Only a handful of companies and publications would be using the images.

Related stories

Since the startup community is also small, there aren't as many opportunities to collaborate with other startups or gain knowledge from them. There's only one VC , and there aren't any mature startup accelerators .

We planned to expand into a bigger market eventually.

We were determined to keep working despite the uncertainties caused by the conflict

During the first week after the events of October 7 , I was checking the news every day. Waking up was a struggle. People living in Europe and the US invited me to healing circles, but I wasn't ready to talk about the situation yet.

On October 9, I got on a call with Raya, who was with her family in Ramallah, and our CTO, who was with me in Jordan, to discuss the next steps. We had been running small testing advertising campaigns for "The Middle Frame" and were supposed to start larger campaigns in October, but we decided that, ethically speaking, it didn't feel right. We stopped our advertising efforts until February.

We took a screenshot of the call as a statement that we will keep working even in the toughest times. When "The Middle Frame" goes through a hard time in the future, we can look back at that screenshot.

Raya and I talked about the possibility of her moving to Jordan , but she said it wouldn't be easy — her kids and husband have their lives in Ramallah — and the conversation didn't go anywhere at the time.

We're thinking about the people dying and the struggles that our people are facing. Being in the media industry, we're documenting life in the region. It's not easy for us to ignore what's happening.

We know other startup cofounders from Gaza whose office buildings were bombed and who have officially stopped working. A cofounder who I met in Jordan just last year was killed — it was the toughest news I'd ever received in my life.

We're now planning to relocate to the UAE

During Israel's war on Gaza that followed the October 7 attack, the whole Palestinian economy faced the consequences. Middle Frame sales had halted completely in the area.

Due to the situation, I've been on the road travelling. Since October, I've been in Egypt, Dubai, Jerusalem and Ramallah. I was in Jordan until the end of January, and we initially decided to focus our efforts on the Jordanian market. I met with potential clients, like advertising and news agencies, and pitched to potential investors.

We don't know what the future holds. We took a risk by operating in Ramallah for nearly two years, but we knew we should acknowledge that there was no more room for growth and no longer risk our investors' money in a market filled with uncertainty.

Recently, Israeli settler attacks in the West Bank have been very frequent. In mid-April, I was returning from a wedding and got stuck in a village for hours because the settlers were blocking the road. That was the same night Iran fired on Israel ; it really hit me that we can't stay here.

We've been discussing whether we're willing to relocate. We know that the UAE and Saudi Arabia are bigger markets, and we think the UAE — where I believe there's a very diverse business market — would be the best place for us to go.

We're waiting on news from a local investor, but Raya, our CTO, and I hope to relocate at the end of this year. Luckily, Raya's husband is understanding and open to moving.

We hope to return in the future

If I had started "The Middle Frame" anywhere else, we might have been able to grow faster and raise more investments, but I don't regret what we did.

In the future, when our business is stable in a different market, we could maybe have a smaller operation in the Palestinian market.

The Palestinian startup ecosystem needs more examples of successful startups in the wider region to support the startups in Palestine and more investment bodies to support the early-stage startups.

Because the Palestinian startup community is so small, we've had to get on calls with investors and startup founders from other countries to get support and advice; it's pushed us to make connections internationally and it's made us more resilient.

However, taking a minute to zoom out and look at the big picture is important. Some days, you wake up to a news story that is painful to see and hear, making your day 10 times harder to work through.

Watch: World Central Kitchen founder describes the IDF attack that killed 7 aid workers

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Columbia faculty, students continue protests; police order dispersal of gathering at UCLA: Updates

Editor's Note: This page is a summary of news on campus protests for Wednesday, May 1. For the latest news, view our live updates file for Thursday, May 2.

NEW YORK − Hundreds of faculty and graduate student workers rallied on a sunny Wednesday afternoon outside Columbia University’s only open entrance, protesting the university’s decision hours earlier to send police on campus and arrest more than 100 pro-Palestinian demonstrators.

Protesters held signs, including “no cops on campus,” as police entered and exited the campus gates just feet away. Others held signs calling for university President Minouche Shafik to resign. Faculty members said access was heavily restricted, as campus was closed for a second day in the period before finals, open only to students living on campus and essential workers.

The NYPD announced almost 300 arrests had taken place Tuesday at Columbia and City College − hours before Los Angeles police in riot gear swept onto UCLA's campus to break up a violent melee between dueling protesters as opposition to Israel's war in Gaza continued to roll through universities across the nation.

Dozens of the New York arrests involved demonstrators removed from an administration building at Columbia, where officers also took down encampments that had been the epicenter of the protests nationwide.

"Students and outside activists breaking Hamilton Hall doors, mistreating our Public Safety officers and maintenance staff, and damaging property are acts of destruction, not political speech," Shafik said in a statement Wednesday. She added that many students felt unwelcome on campus because of the disruption and antisemitic comments made by some protesters.

At City College, affiliated with City University of New York, officials requested NYPD assistance after the college said students and "un-affiliated external individuals" refused to leave. The school issued a statement saying students have a right to demonstrate peacefully but that police were called in because of "specific and repeated acts of violence and vandalism, not in response to peaceful protest."

About 1,200 people in southern Israel were killed and more than 200 taken hostage in the Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct. 7. The Israeli retaliatory assault has killed nearly 35,000 Palestinians in Gaza, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, and obliterated much of the enclave's infrastructure. The humanitarian crisis has fueled outrage on some U.S. campuses and spurred demands for an end to investment in Israeli companies and amnesty for student protesters.

Developments:

∎ New Hampshire State Police said personnel were at the University of New Hampshire and Dartmouth College on Wednesday night "in response to illegal activity and at the request of local law enforcement." At the University of New Hampshire, police arrested 10 to 20 pro-Palestinian protesters who started setting up an encampment after a rally. Officers at Dartmouth College cleared out the final tents at the campus encampment shortly before 11:40 p.m., its student newspaper reported .

∎ Several hundred protesters gathered Wednesday for a peaceful demonstration on Ohio State University. School officials had locked up some buildings in anticipation of the demonstration. Unlike last week's protest, which led to almost 40 arrests, the crowd began dispersing around 9 p.m. and the demonstration ended before 10 p.m.

∎ Columbia Provost Angela Olinto said all academic activities at the school's main campus for the rest of the semester, including final exams, will be held remotely, with some minor exceptions.

∎ Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp said he supports the strong law enforcement response unleashed on protesters at the University of Georgia and Emory University in Atlanta. “Send a message,'' he said. "We are not going to allow Georgia to become the next Columbia University.”

∎ Protesters and police clashed at the University of Wisconsin in Madison when officers broke up an encampment there Wednesday. Video from the scene showed some protesters being pinned to the ground.

∎ Tulane University said at least 14 protesters were arrested from the "illegal encampment" the school said was dominated by protesters "unaffiliated with our community."

Police order dispersal of large pro-Palestinian gathering at UCLA

Police ordered a large group of Pro-Palestinian demonstrators to leave or face arrest late Wednesday, a night after violence erupted at the encampment by counter-protestors.

Video posted on social media showed counterdemonstrators battering a makeshift barricade around pro-Palestinian protesters at the Los Angeles campus. The Los Angeles Police Department said it responded to UCLA's request to restore order "due to multiple acts of violence within the large encampment" on the campus.

The Los Angeles Times reported police did not intervene for more than an hour after arriving as counterdemonstrators wearing black outfits and white masks − some armed with metal pipes and sticks − repeatedly tried to breach the perimeter of the encampment while campers pushed back and several fights broke out.

Los Angeles police said in a statement Wednesday that officers made no arrests and did not use force in its response to the UCLA campus Tuesday night. The department also noted that no officers were injured.

UCLA canceled Wednesday classes and Chancellor Gene Block, who blamed the violence on a "group of instigators'' who attacked the encampment, said the student conduct process has been initiated and could lead to disciplinary action including suspension or expulsion.

The Times also reported University of California President Michael Drake told the Board of Regents that 15 people were injured in the overnight fracas, and he's ordering an independent review of the events, including how UCLA handled them.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom condemned the violence, saying in a statement , "The right to free speech does not extend to inciting violence, vandalism, or lawlessness on campus. Those who engage in illegal behavior must be held accountable for their actions − including through criminal prosecution, suspension, or expulsion.''

The Jewish Federation Los Angeles issued a statement saying it was "appalled" at the violence, which did not "represent the Jewish community or our values." But the statement also said the UCLA administration was at fault for allowing an environment that made students feel unsafe.

UCLA students barricade themselves in courtyard in tense protest

Hundreds of students at UCLA barricaded themselves in a courtyard between two campus buildings Wednesday, using sheets of plywood, planks, ropes, and tents to block the doors leading from the buildings into the outside area.

The mood was anxious. Sporadic announcements over a loudspeaker informed students they were part of an illegal settlement and would face consequences if they remained. In response, the crowd chanted: “We’re not leaving, we’re not leaving.”

“I’m terrified, obviously, I think everybody is,” said 21-year-old student Aidan Doyle. “But we’re going to stay as long as we possibly can, until we’re being physically removed.”

Thousands of students were spread out in the areas directly outside the main protest. Organizers shouted over loud speakers that they didn’t need any more supplies as piles of protective equipment, pizza and Gatorade grew at the main entrance to the camp.

On Tuesday night, the camp was attacked by a group of violent counter-protesters, who fired chemical agents and fireworks into the protestors and assaulted dozens of people.

– Will Carless

Columbia faculty members protest decision to bring in police

Some of faculty and graduate student workers rallying outside Columbia's gates wore orange safety vests that said “faculty,” which they donned days earlier to help protect students in the encampment. 

“There is not a single university left in Gaza, and I bet a lot of you feel there is not a university here in Morningside Heights,” Joseph Hawley, an associate professor of classics, told gatherers, referring to the neighborhood around the school. “But I’m here to tell you the university is here on this sidewalk.”

Barricades still lined city streets outside Columbia’s campus as police officers stood watch. Shafik has asked the New York Police Department to remain on campus until May 17, two days after graduation.

Mana Kia, an associate professor, read a draft statement from the Columbia chapter of the American Association of University Professors saying members "unequivocally condemn President Shafik, the Columbia board of trustees and other senior administrators involved in the decision to call in the NYPD and clear the encampment of student protesters." The statement said the association has "no confidence in the administration."

Organizer says 'ordinary people,' not agitators behind protests

Less than three hours before a huge deployment of New York City police officers broke up an encampment and retook a building at Columbia on Tuesday night, Mayor Eric Adams made a forceful case that the pro-Palestinian protest at the school had been hijacked by "outside agitators'' bent on sowing chaos.

Those involved in pushing for the movement off-campus disagree, saying it belongs to regular folks trying to raise awareness to the Palestinians' plight.

Manolo De Los Santos, an organizer with The People’s Forum, said those joining the protests alongside students are just “ordinary New Yorkers.”“The power of this moment is that it’s everyone coming together,” he said. “It’s health care workers, it’s teachers, it’s city workers. It’s ordinary people who feel so strongly.”   

‘Never felt this much tension on campus,' UNH student says

Police arrested pro-Palestinian protesters who started setting up an encampment in front of the University of New Hampshire's Thompson Hall Wednesday night.

UNH Police Chief Paul Dean estimated between 10 to 20 protesters were arrested after a rally led to demonstrators attempting to set up an encampment at the state’s flagship university, drawing local and New Hampshire State Police. Some demonstrators shouted at officers, calling them "cowards" and chanting "free Palestine."

The peaceful rally lasted until around 6:30 p.m. Then, Dean said protesters rushed in to form an encampment and attempted to barricade their tents. Leftover tents and items on Thompson Hall's lawn were removed by police around 9 p.m., loaded onto a truck as dozens of students watched. 

Shane Tilton, a sophomore who lives in a nearby residence hall, said he walked over to observe after hearing the commotion. He watched from beneath the Thompson Hall arches as the encampment was removed from the most well-known gathering spot on campus.

“I’ve never felt this much tension on campus,” Tilton said. “I feel like there’s a lot of tension. From my perspective, it seems like the cops don’t have much to do here. They seemed like they were here to jump at this opportunity and see some action.”

The American Civil Liberties Union of New Hampshire condemned police’s actions Wednesday night in Durham and at a similar protest at Dartmouth College in Hanover.

“Freedom of speech and the right to demonstrate are foundational principles of democracy and core constitutional rights," said Devon Chaffee, executive director of the state ACLU. "We urge university and government leaders to create environments that safeguard constitutionally protected speech."

– Ian Lenahan and Deb Cram, Portsmouth Herald

'Intifada' chants by some protesters are 'horribly upsetting'

Dozens of protesters gathered Wednesday in and around Fordham University’s Leon Lowenstein Center in Manhattan and established an encampment. The group is demanding the university divest from all companies “complicit in the Israeli occupation and ongoing siege,” according to a statement from the Fordham for Palestine Coalition.

As the demonstration grew throughout the afternoon, it also attracted a handful of onlookers and opponents who occasionally shouted pro-Israel remarks as they passed. Asa Kittay and Carly Connors said they were in class down the street when they heard demonstrators chanting “Intifada,” an Arabic word for uprising or rebellion. Kittay, who held up a tablet with an image of the Israeli flag, said it was “horribly upsetting.”“I believe that these two states can co-exist peacefully,” Connors said. “I do not believe in an intifada. That is not very anti-genocide.” John Lefkowitz, who attended the protest with friends who go to Fordham, said he believes the demonstrations are sometimes incorrectly characterized as antisemitic by people who are uninformed about the position of anti-Zionism.“It’s often told that Jews should feel unsafe in pro-Palestine circles. As a Jew, I’ve never felt unsafe in a pro-Palestinian circle,” he said. “These people are great, they’re not anti-semites.”

Back to the future: Columbia a focal point again in protest history

The descent of police on Hamilton Hall at Columbia University outfitted in full riot gear and enforcing mass arrests Tuesday night fell on the same date and place police cracked down on antiwar protesters in 1968. Some fear the clash heralds a similar outcome at the upcoming Democratic National Convention in Chicago, where political leaders are emboldened to sic the cops on demonstrators ever more intent on showing up.“I don’t think it’ll keep anyone from Chicago, it might even inspire more people to come,” said Hatem Abudayyeh, a spokesperson for the Coalition to March on the DNC and the national chair of the U.S. Palestinian Community Network.Democrats already feared a repeat of the chaos from 56 years ago where police and demonstrators clashed, drawing all eyes away from the convention.At the crackdown at Columbia April 30, 1968, police arrested over 700 people and over 100 injuries were reported, according to a Columbia University Libraries publication. Police arrested almost 300 people Tuesday between Columbia and City College, according to the city’s top cop.

– Michael Loria

Arraignments from first arrests at New York universities begin

Late Wednesday night, the first arrests from the protests at Columbia University and the City College of New York began to be arraigned at the Manhattan Criminal Courthouse, the same building where former President Donald Trump’s hush money trial is underway.

Outside the court’s arraignment part, dozens of the protesters’ supporters gathered in the halls, many of them wearing keffiyehs. The mood was jubilant, and many were chatting or conferring with each other in small groups.

When one protester exited the courtroom after his arraignment, he was quickly swarmed by friends and dropped to the floor in a brief moment of celebration.

That protester, who was at the City College demonstrations, had been charged with assaulting a police officer, a felony, and resisting arrest. However, the prosecutor handling his case recommended to the judge that he be released from jail, given that police “continue to investigate” the incident.

Arrests across U.S.: Campus protests across the US result in arrests by the hundreds. But will the charges stick?

– Asher Stockler, The Journal News

NYU encampment stays in place after others in city were torn down

The day after other city schools saw violent clashes with police, the encampment at NYU's lower Manhattan campus stood untouched. Punctuated by faded chalk reading "End Jewish and Palestinian hate," the collection of tents and chairs took up about one city block near 181 Mercer Street, where the university's Paulson Center is located. 

Fenced-off and guarded by a smattering of campus security, the encampment was bracing for hot weather with some protesters carrying umbrellas to block out the sun and one arriving with large bags of ice. Demonstrators needed to present a school ID to enter the encampment. The barricades held signs reading, "Fund our education, not the occupation" and listing the protesters' demands, which include divestment and closing NYU's Tel Aviv campus.

The shadow of Tuesday's mass arrests and the forced removal of encampments on the other end of the island at Columbia and City College of New York was evident. Just outside the barricades, a group of demonstrators huddled to practice safety tactics.

− Anna Kaufman  

New York students continue protests day after mass arrests

Hundreds of demonstrators at Columbia University and City College of New York gathered Wednesday evening a day after administrators from both universities called police in riot gear on the protesters.

“Our encampment is what it could look like to be liberated,” Hadeeqa Arzoo, a City College student, said, as several cars honked in support while she led chants of “Free Palestine.” “So I will continue to cultivate these spaces of liberation within the belly of the beast. That is resistance.”

Even if both schools no longer had encampments, demonstrators promised to continue their activism in support of Palestinians and in opposition to schools’ investments in Israel.

“There is not a single student-led uprising in history met with severe state-sanctioned violence that did not end up being right,” Maryam Alwan, a Columbia student organizer, said. She likened their cause — and police's response — to the civil rights movement and Black Lives Matter protests, including allegations of outside agitators and property damage.

As the sun fell outside City College’s campus in West Harlem, several dozen police officers surrounded the protesters standing inside barricades. The rally, which included two Islamic prayers, would continue into the night before students returned to Columbia, some walking down the valley and back up the hill to the other campus.

– Eduardo Cuevas

UT-Dallas confirms 17 arrests hours after encampment set up

The University of Texas at Dallas confirmed law enforcement officers arrested over a dozen people hours after pro-Palestinian student demonstrators constructed an encampment Wednesday.

UT-Dallas spokesperson Brittany Magelssen told USA TODAY that 17 people were arrested on criminal trespassing charges as of 5 p.m. local time Wednesday after university officials gave written notice to remove the tents. Magelssen said UT-Dallas requested outside law enforcement officers to assist. 

“Individuals may peacefully assemble in the common outdoor areas of campus to exercise their right to free speech, but they may not construct an encampment or block pathways. In the last six months, there have been several peaceful protests on the UT Dallas campus,” Magelssen said. "The UT Dallas Police Department and area law enforcement partners are continuing to monitor the situation."

The UT-Dallas chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine said in a social media post students began setting up the "Gaza Liberation Plaza" encampment at 4:30 a.m. Wednesday.

“We reject our university’s complicity in profiting off the genocide. We will continue to escalate and put pressure on our university until UTD/UTIMCO divest from war profiteers and Palestine is free,” the student organization said early Wednesday.

High school students joining the protest movement

The proliferation of antiwar protests in college campuses across the U.S. is filtering down to the younger academic levels , and some of the grown-ups are not happy about it.

A sit-in planned for Wednesday at a Chicago prep school is the latest among high school demonstrations showing support for embattled Palestinians in Gaza. On Monday, about 100 high school students in Austin, Texas,  walked out of their classes in protest . Last week, students in western Washington state similarly expressed their objection to the U.S. backing Israel's military efforts in Gaza.

"I'm protesting against a government that is actively hurting people just because of where they were born and what language they speak," Pia Ibsen, a senior at McCallum High School in Austin, told USA TODAY. Ibsen helped organize a walkout and left class for about an hour and a half.

Some school and government officials have tried to stop the protests, arguing they create a hostile environment for Jewish students. That was the case last week when two county commissioners in New Jersey demanded a school district's superintendent cancel a pro-Palestinian walkout at East Regional High in Voorhees Township. The protest was replaced by a rally for human rights.

− Cybele Mayes-Osterman and Kayla Jimenez

UAW members hope presence at protest will 'move the needle'

In addition to the campus protests, hundreds of people bearing pro-Palestinian signs and t-shirts gathered at New York City’s Foley Square on Wednesday afternoon for a march and rally led by labor organizers on International Worker’s Day.

Participants included Brian Sullivan, 45, a member of the United Auto Workers whose local chapter represents social workers. Sullivan said seeing labor organizers come out in such large numbers could help “really move the needle.”

“UAW endorsed Joe Biden and hopefully he feels some exposure here, that if he doesn’t do what’s right and what the UAW members are asking for, he risks that endorsement,” Sullivan said.

Jeremy Montano, another UAW member who works in the legal field, said the recent “explosion of interest” in the conflict in Gaza, particularly on college campuses, has also given him some hope. “Obviously it’s balanced out with a lot of despair about what’s actually happening in Gaza,” said Montano, 37. “But there’s been a little bit of a source of hope that maybe longer term things might change.”

Almost 300 protesters arrested in NYC; student group says some were injured

New York City police made 119 arrests at Columbia University and 173 at City College in Tuesday night's crackdowns on protesters, Commissioner Edward Caban said Wednesday. Charges range from trespassing to criminal mischief to burglary, and the breakdown of students to non-students facing charges was not yet available, he said.

Police said there were no injuries, although CUNY for Palestine issued a statement saying one student suffered a broken ankle, two had teeth broken and others received burns from pepper spray used by police during the clash.

Mayor Eric Adams said drones and encryption radios used at Columbia provided police with the element of surprise when they retook Hamilton Hall, adding that "professionals at radicalizing" had influenced the student protesters and co-opted the protest but without providing details.

Officers climbed into Hamilton Hall, which protesters had occupied earlier Tuesday, through a second-story window. Within three hours Tuesday night, they had retaken the building, NYPD said.

"It was about external actors hijacking a peaceful protest and influencing students to escalate," Adams said. "We cannot allow what should be a lawful protest turn into a violent spectacle that serves no purpose."

Fordham, another NYC university, establishes encampment

Outside Fordham University’s Leon Lowenstein Center building on Wednesday, another encampment sprung up. Students, faculty and community members surrounded by law enforcement officers and newly erected barricades chanted “Free, free Palestine” and “Disclose, divest, we will not stop, we will not rest.” Inside, demonstrators including current and former students milled around their tents, played drums, banged on windows and held up signs reading “Free Palestine” and “Divest genocide funds” for passersby to see.

Julie Norris, a 27-year-old Fordham alumni, said she arrived before 8 a.m. Wednesday to help establish the encampment. Norris, who spoke to USA TODAY on the phone from inside the Lowenstein Center, estimated about 30 people were inside with her and said they plan to stay until their demands are met.

“The students can’t be stopped,” she said. “We saw intense repression against students on other campuses yesterday, and this morning students are ready to stand back up. There’s going to be no business as usual until Palestine is free.”

Northwestern, Brown reach deal: Make pact with student demonstrators to curb protests

Some campus protesters cut deals, claim victory

Some student activists who pitched tents and camped on university lawns to protest Israel's military attacks in Gaza have begun to declare victory after hammering out agreements with school administrators.  Northwestern University  just outside Chicago became the first U.S. school to publicly announce a deal on Monday. On Tuesday, Brown University protesters broke camp after President Christina Paxson said the Rhode Island school will bring divestment demands to a vote. Organizers hope the deals set a new precedent for protest encampments around the U.S. and show a way to find common ground without using force.

“What these students have done is truly, truly historical,” Summer Pappachen, a graduate student and organizer of the Northwestern encampment, told USA TODAY on Tuesday amid cleanup of the lawn students held for days. “We have been able to achieve (our goals) while keeping students safe.”

− Michael Loria

Columbia building cleared: Police storm into building held by pro-Palestinian protesters

What are college protests across the US about?

The  student protesters  opposed to Israel's military attacks in Gaza say  they want their schools to stop funneling endowment money  to Israeli companies and other businesses, like weapons manufacturers, that profit from the war in Gaza. In addition to divestment, protesters are calling for a cease-fire, and student governments at some colleges have also passed resolutions in recent weeks calling for an end to academic partnerships with Israel. The protesters also want the U.S. to stop supplying funding and weapons to the war effort.

More recently, amnesty for students and professors involved in the protests has become an issue. Protesters want protections amid threats of disciplinary action and termination for those participating in demonstrations that violate campus policy or local laws.

− Claire Thornton

Contributing: Reuters

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’50 Completely True Things,’ a Palestinian-American’s call for compromise, strikes a chord on social media 

( JTA ) — Last fall, Mo Husseini wrote a series of propositions — what he called “50 Completely True Things” — about the Israel-Hamas war, and posted it on the social media site Threads.

Identifying himself as “a Palestinian American who is tired of stupid people,” Husseini set out to puncture myths on both sides of the conflict, suggesting that neither Palestinians nor Israelis had a monopoly on truth, justice or the moral high ground. 

“This isn’t an essay in Foreign Affairs, you know? This is an idiot shitposting on the internet in trying to leverage a sense of humor to point out the delusions on both sides,” Husseini said in an interview with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency on Monday, using internet slang for aggressive, often ironic social media content. 

“It’s not my place to decide what happens between Palestinian and Israeli negotiators,” he told JTA. “What matters to me is helping people, and getting past the delusions.” 

The post — witty, profane and anguished — got a polite if unspectacular response on Threads, which is owned by Meta.

Three days ago Husseini re-upped the post as an essay on the self-publishing site Medium, and in the days since its readership has soared. Husseini has seen his once modest following on Threads grow to over 16,000 . The essay on Medium has been read more than 3,500 times . It’s been shared countless times on Facebook , a platform where Husseini barely had a presence before the weekend.

Many of those sharing the post are Jews who seem eager to read and identify with an essay that seeks common ground in a polarizing debate, and, as one Facebook user commented, “tried to push through some of the double talk and extremism.”

Husseini offers plenty to trigger partisans of all stripes, from campus protesters to pro-Israel groups. He notes that there “are shitty and awful people” on all sides of the conflict, that Israelis and Palestinians have both committed “acts of terror and violence,” and that their respective governments do not necessarily speak for their people. 

Many of the essay’s short declarations refute some of the shibboleths of partisans: He undercuts, for example, the far-left assertion that the conflict is a clash between white supremacists and people of color, and mocks the far-right Zionist view that the Palestinians have no legitimate claims to a state of their own. 

As for the war, Husseini condemns the Oct. 7 attacks and writes that Hamas has earned “every f–king thing that the Israeli military throws at them.” At the same time, he laments the enormous toll among civilians in Gaza. “What is happening in Gaza to civilians is f–king awful, and not the smartest thing for Israel to do, and some aspects of Israeli military activity may be war crimes, and it doesn’t have to be genocide for it to be tragic,” he writes.

The essay also rejects calls, increasingly popular on the pro-Palestinian left, for a one-state liberal democracy of Palestinians and Jews. “[T]his wonderful future has about as much chance of happening in the near term as this 5’8″ 53-year-old Palestinian has of being a starter for the Golden State Warriors,” writes Husseini. “A two-state solution is the only workable one.”

Josh Feigelson, president and CEO of the Institute for Jewish Spirituality, was so taken with the virality of the post that he asked his Facebook followers to explain why they had shared or recommended the piece . 

“It felt like a novel Palestinian voice that I wanted to amplify — his publicly affirming Israel’s existence and Hamas’s atrocities, along with the failures of all sides,” responded a Massachusetts rabbi.

“I chose to post it because it speaks to the broad center, which I believe is both the ‘silent majority’ of Zionists and Palestinians and the only possible way out of this conflict,” wrote a Jewish educator.

Husseini also got a boost earlier this month from Rabbi Sharon Brous, the high-profile leader of the Los Angeles congregation IKAR. She quoted another essay by Husseini in her Shabbat sermon on May 4, which is posted to YouTube . In that essay Husseini asserts that “true long-term freedom, security, and self-determination for Palestinians cannot exist without creating a reciprocal reality for Israelis. ”

Brous called that essay “one of the most compelling articles I have read about this conflict in the past decade.” (The novelist Michael Chabon shared Brous’ sermon with his 27,000 followers on Threads.) Brous compared Husseini to Rep. John Lewis, the late congressman and civil rights leader. 

Husseini, however, is neither a politician nor an activist, but a design and creative director who lives in the Seattle area. “This has nothing to do with my job,” he said of his posts on the war. 

Husseini’s father was born in Jerusalem, the descendant of a branch of a well-known Palestinian Muslim family. Mo Husseini grew up in Kuwait, and after boarding school in the United Kingdom studied political economics at the University of California, Berkeley. He turned to filmmaking after graduation, working at George Lucas’ Industrial Light & Magic and eventually directing and supervising visual effects for commercials. He currently works for a firm that creates events and brand awareness for major companies.  

“I’m not a representative of an organization. I don’t speak for Palestinians,” he said in an interview Monday from his Seattle-area office. “And I don’t certainly speak for Jews.” 

“50 Completely True Things,” he said, “came from a deep sense of frustration that everybody knows the answer, especially that the correct answer is a democratic state with equal rights for everybody. And that is fantastic in an idealized world where the Nakba didn’t happen and the Holocaust didn’t happen. But the reality is that everybody is very aware what the solution is, and that solution is fundamentally two states.

“This idea that the Israelis are just going to have to pack up and leave starts to be a symbolic struggle against reality,” he added. “There’s no one here with clean hands and in the context of that, I think it’s incumbent on people to find a way that acknowledges reality.”

Husseini said 90% of the responses to his “Facts” essay have been positive. As for the negative reactions, he dismisses the idea that in acknowledging pain on the Israeli side and culpability on the Palestinian side he is “normalizing” Israel and Zionism. 

“I don’t need to ‘normalize’ Israel,” he said. “The State of Israel is normalized. It’s there. Do I wish it didn’t exist the way it exists now, do I have problems with Israel politically? Yes. But I also have those feelings about every state in the world. But if the question is where people can just live their lives, then you have to acknowledge reality.”

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