ISRAEL IS 70 YEARS

(part 6)

Trouble at the borders and thin and weak peace

There has never been a time in the modern state of Israel that peace existed, it has always been short-lived. In 1973, on the day of Atonement, an annual Holy Day of fasting which the Jews call Yom Kippur, Syria and Egypt forces launched a surprise attack against Israel. This war is known as the Yom Kippur war. Financial support and an additional 100,000 troops from other Arab countries were sent to aid the Syrian and Egyptian armies.

It was very difficult times where Israel's very survival was at stake. Attacked to a certain extent by surprise, Israel's forces scrambled to recover lost ground in the very first days and eventually reached a ceasefire a month later after the loss of thousands of lives from both sides.

In the southern parts of Israel, in 1979, Israel reached a peace agreement with Egypt. The deal of the treaty was the free passage of Israeli ships through the Suez Canal in exchange for the Sinai Peninsula captured 12 years earlier from the Egyptians during the Six-Day war.

During this process, Egypt became the first Arab nation to recognise the state of Israel. This was not well accepted by the Arab world which resulted in Egypt being excluded for 10 years from the Arab league. Furthermore, this became even more complicated with the assassination of Anwar Sadat in 1981, the Egypt president, by the Egyptian Islamic Jihad in reprisal for the treaty which not only included the general tolerance of the Jewish state but also his lack of commitment to the Palestinian movement.

Meanwhile, North of Israel, Lebanon was struggling with its own internal political turmoil resulting in the loss of hundreds of thousands of lives during the Lebanese Civil War that lasted 15 years from 1975 to 1990. This war did not stop the Lebanon based Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) to carry out raids and attacks against the northern border areas which led to retaliatory measures from Israel into Lebanon during the years of 1978-79.

However, these attacks continued on Israeli civilians, resulting in a war that broke out in 1982 where Israel tried to put an end and uproot the PLO. As soon this was achieved, another terror group appeared on the scene, Hezbollah, which became the chief militant

anti-Israel organisation Lebanon's borders.

To the Eastern areas, Jordan eventually came to peace with Israel in 1994. This resulted effectively giving up its claim to the West Bank and Jerusalem even if advocating that those areas also became part of a separate Palestinian state.

This resulted in a hotly debated strategy, which became known as the 2-state solution, where a mutual agreement is strived for to form a separate Jewish and Arab state in the land of Israel as envisioned by the 1947 UN Resolution. Up until now, many attempts and proposals were made but consistently rejected by the Arab world that would prefer to see the Jewish state eradicated rather than co-exist with it.

Specifically one area to the northeast of Israel, the Golan Heights, have been the thorny point of disagreement between Israel and Syria. It belonged to Syria before the 1967 war, who repeatedly shelled the Israeli settlements in the lands below leading to continuous fights.

Since capturing the Golan Heights in the 1967 war, Israel has built substantial settlements and populated the area.

(to be continued…)