The Struggle for Peace in the Middle East (SACE Stage 2 Modern History)

What this dot point is asking

You must explain the causes of conflict, its major episodes, and the attempts to make peace, and assess why a lasting settlement has been so elusive. Strong answers weigh competing national claims and engage with the role of outside powers.

Origins of the conflict

The roots lie in competing claims to the same land. Late nineteenth-century Zionism sought a Jewish homeland in Palestine, then under Ottoman and later British rule. The Balfour Declaration (1917) endorsed a Jewish national home, while Arab inhabitants sought their own independence. Jewish immigration rose sharply after the rise of Nazism and the Holocaust. After 1945 Britain handed the problem to the United Nations, whose 1947 partition plan proposed separate Jewish and Arab states. The Jewish leadership accepted; the Arab states rejected it.

Wars and the Palestinian question (1948-1973)

Israel declared independence in May 1948; the surrounding Arab states invaded, and in the resulting war Israel survived and expanded its territory. Around 700,000 Palestinians fled or were expelled, an event Palestinians call the Nakba (catastrophe), creating a long-term refugee problem. Further wars followed: the Suez Crisis (1956), the Six-Day War (1967), in which Israel seized the West Bank, Gaza, Sinai and the Golan Heights, and the Yom Kippur War (1973). The 1967 occupation placed large Palestinian populations under Israeli control and made the future of the occupied territories central to the conflict. The Palestine Liberation Organisation, led by Yasser Arafat, emerged as the voice of Palestinian nationalism.

The search for peace (1978-2000)

Peace efforts produced real but partial gains. The Camp David Accords (1978), brokered by US President Jimmy Carter, led to the Egypt-Israel peace treaty (1979), in which Egypt recognised Israel and regained Sinai, the first Arab state to make peace. The First Intifada, a Palestinian uprising from 1987, pushed the issue back to the centre. The Oslo Accords (1993), sealed by a handshake between Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, established mutual recognition and limited Palestinian self-rule through the Palestinian Authority. Jordan made peace with Israel in 1994. Yet the Oslo process stalled: Rabin was assassinated by an Israeli extremist in 1995, settlements expanded, and the Camp David summit of 2000 failed, followed by the violent Second Intifada.

Why peace has been elusive, and historiography

A comprehensive settlement has foundered on core issues: the borders of a Palestinian state, the status of Jerusalem (claimed by both sides), the fate of Palestinian refugees, and Israeli settlements in the occupied territories. Internal divisions, the role of militant groups, and shifting US and regional involvement have all complicated the search for peace. Wider regional conflict, including the Lebanese civil war and the Iran-Iraq War, added further instability.

Historians debate the conflict fiercely, often dividing along national lines. Israeli "new historians" have re-examined the events of 1948 and the refugee question; others emphasise repeated Arab rejection of compromise; and many stress the role of outside powers and the Cold War. SACE answers should explain the competing narratives rather than adopting one as fact.

The historiographical divide on this topic is itself part of what students must analyse. Traditional Israeli accounts emphasised Arab rejection of the 1947 partition and repeated aggression as the cause of conflict, treating the refugee exodus as a consequence of war rather than deliberate policy. From the late 1980s Israeli "new historians" such as Benny Morris and Avi Shlaim, working from declassified archives, argued that expulsions and a deliberate policy contributed to the 1948 exodus, complicating the older narrative. Palestinian historiography centres the Nakba and dispossession, while a third strand stresses the distorting role of the Cold War and great-power interests. A strong SACE answer recognises that the sources historians use, and the national positions they write from, shape these competing accounts, and weighs the evidence rather than adopting one narrative as settled fact.