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The Palestinian Conflict : The Israeli Conflict

Decent Essays

Steven Sauer
REL100
10/31/2015

The Israeli, Palestinian Conflict

Lets begin as most historians do, in the late 19th century. The Ottoman empire ruled over what is now called Palestine. The population there, according to Ottoman records from 1878 was 87% muslim, 10% christian and 3% jewish. Everyone spoke arabic as the daily language and in Jerusalem the religious population was about equal. To give you a sense of life in the Ottoman Empire, an arab orthodox christian musician named Wasif Jawhariyyeh grew up in Jerusalem in the first decade of the 20th century learning the Quran in school and celebrating both passover and eve with his jewish and muslim neighbours. The Ottoman Palestine was ensured a place of which people of religious faiths lived peacefully together.

The late 19th century was the golden age of nationalism in Europe and no place was crazier than the Habsburg Hungarian Empire in which at least 10 nations wanted their own state. In that hyper nationalistic empire lived a jewish generalist named Theodor Herzl who had hoped that jewish people could descend into European nations but soon became convinced that the jewish people needed to leave Europe to settle in their own state. The concept of jewish nationalism became to be known as Zionism. It 's important to keep in mind that most zionist jews were secular jews. So they imagined Israel as a state for jews more than a jewish state. In 1917 the british government, hoping to gain support of the jewish people

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