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The Main Obstacles To The Settlement Of Israel

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Jews have lived in Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) and the Gaza Strip throughout recorded history, until the 1948 War of Independence, when they were forced to flee the invading Arab armies.

When Israel captured the West Bank in the 1967 Six-Day War, no Israeli citizens lived in the territory. The following year, a small group of religious Jews rented rooms at the Park Hotel in Hebron for Passover, saying they wanted to be near the Tomb of the Patriarchs, one of the holiest sites in Judaism (as well as Islam and Christianity). The Israeli government reluctantly allowed them to stay "temporarily." From that beginning, hundreds of thousands of Israeli Jews now reside in the West Bank, citing religion, history and Israel's security among their reasons for being there. But the Palestinians, along with the rest of the world, see their presence as one of the key obstacles to a peace agreement and the creation of a Palestinian state. …show more content…

The evidence points to the opposite conclusion. From 1949-67, when Jews were forbidden to live on the West Bank, the Arabs refused to make peace with Israel. From 1967-77, the Labor Party established only a few strategic settlements in the territories, yet the Arabs showed no interest in making peace with Israel. In 1977, months after a Likud government committed to greater settlement activity took power, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat went to Jerusalem. One year later, Israel froze settlements, hoping the gesture would entice other Arabs to join the Camp David peace process But none would. In another Camp David summit in 2000, Ehud Barak offered to dismantle most settlements and create a Palestinian state in exchange for peace, and Yasser Arafat rejected the

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