Arab-Israeli Conflict: History, Wars, and Key Events

Historical Background of the Arab-Israeli Conflict

The Arab-Israeli conflict has a long-standing history that traces back to the 1910s, when the Ottoman Empire was still in place. During World War I, Germany sided with the Ottomans while Britain sided with the Arabs in their revolt against the Ottoman Empire. The British promised the Arabs self-rule, and to the Jews they promised a homeland in Palestine (Kattan et al., 2009, p. 59). The Arabs took control of Syria, but immediately after the war, the League of Nations granted France control over Syria and gave Britain control over what are today Israel, the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, and Jordan.

In 1921, the British divided their large mandate into two parts: the east of the Jordan River became the Emirate of Transjordan under Abdullah, and the west of the Jordan River became the Mandate of Palestine — the so-called Promised Land for the Jews — though it remained under British control. In the 1930s, Jewish migration to the region increased steadily, accelerating just before World War II due to intensifying persecution of Jews by the Nazis and the Holocaust that followed. The local Arab population in Palestine sought to limit the arrival of Jewish immigrants, leading to escalating clashes between Palestinians and the newly arriving Jewish settlers (Bassiouni & Ben Ami, 2009, p. 21). Neighboring Arab states supported the Palestinian push to restrict Jewish immigration.

Following widespread clashes, Britain relinquished its mandate over Palestine in 1947 and the United Nations took over. The UN proposed the partition of Palestine into two states — one Arab and one Jewish. The Jewish leadership accepted the proposal, but the Arab states rejected it. In the following year, David Ben-Gurion declared the founding of the State of Israel. The surrounding Arab nations opposed this declaration, and Syria, Egypt, Jordan, and Lebanon invaded the newly proclaimed state, but were repulsed. By 1949, Israel had extended its territory significantly beyond the borders originally proposed by the UN.

Another significant episode was Israel's joint military action with France and Britain to invade Egypt's Sinai Peninsula. International pressure, however, forced all three nations to withdraw their troops from the Suez Canal zone. In 1964, arguably the most consequential development in the Arab-Israeli conflict occurred: the formation of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), established as the sole representative of the Palestinian people and dedicated to reclaiming Palestinian land and dismantling the State of Israel (Kattan et al., 2009, p. 62). This marked a decisive turning point in the conflict, one that continues to shape the region to this day.

The 1967 Arab-Israeli War

Following the Suez War of 1956, the 1967 conflict was the next major war between the Arab world and Israel. The scale of the resulting diplomatic failures exposed the shortcomings of the Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson administrations in preventing a renewed Arab-Israeli war. The Tripartite Declaration of 1950, in which the United Kingdom, France, and the United States pledged to prevent aggression against Israel and curb an arms race in the region, held until the early 1960s. The U.S. had pressed for Israel's withdrawal from the Suez Canal, the Gaza Strip, and the Sinai Peninsula in exchange for peace guarantees from neighboring Arab states — an approach that has persisted in U.S. Middle East peacemaking efforts to this day. The U.S. also largely refused Israeli requests for defensive weapons, permitting only limited quantities.

The Lyndon B. Johnson presidency reshaped the U.S. role in the conflict. By the time Johnson took office, policymakers had concluded that the previous approach was no longer viable. This reassessment was driven by the Soviet Union's sale of arms to left-leaning Arab states — Egypt in particular — which threatened to erode Israel's military advantage. Johnson's advisors warned that if the U.S. failed to offset this shift, Israel might launch a preventive war or pursue nuclear weapons development.

The U.S. did not move immediately to supply weapons to Israel but instead held talks with Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser and Soviet leaders to restrain the arms flow into the region. When neither party cooperated, the U.S. sold M48A3 tanks to Israel in 1965 and A-4 Skyhawk aircraft in 1966. The U.S. justified this departure from prior policy by arguing that denying Arab states an arms advantage would help dampen the broader dispute.

These peace-balancing efforts were severely undermined in 1967 when Nasser, together with Palestinian guerrilla organizations, launched strategic attacks and provocative actions against Israel. Nasser declared that UN peacekeepers were no longer welcome in the Suez Canal zone and concentrated Egyptian military forces there. Egypt also imposed a naval blockade cutting off the Gulf of Aqaba to Israeli shipping — acts Israel interpreted as preparation for an imminent attack. Despite U.S. efforts to dissuade retaliation, Israel launched a massive preemptive military campaign that proved overwhelmingly successful. By June 5, the air forces of Syria, Jordan, Iraq, and Egypt had been largely destroyed.

On June 7, 1967, Israeli forces destroyed Egyptian tanks in the Sinai Desert, pushed the Egyptian army back to the Suez Canal, and cleared the West Bank of opposing forces. This conflict, known as the "Six-Day War," was a catastrophic defeat for the Arab world. Four of the region's strongest nations had been beaten by a single, recently formed state. Yet the Israeli victory brought its own difficulties: the capture of the Sinai, the West Bank, and the Golan Heights placed more than 600,000 Arabs under Israeli administration. Their uncertain fate drove many young Palestinians into the PLO, which Israel regarded as a terrorist organization. Israeli domestic politics grew more complex in the aftermath of the 1967 campaign (Khatchadourian, 2000, pp. 29–30).

Conclusion

The Arab-Israeli conflict has been shaped by decades of competing national claims, superpower involvement, and repeated cycles of war and diplomacy. From the Ottoman-era promises made to both Arabs and Jews, through the founding of the State of Israel, the Six-Day War, the Yom Kippur War, and the Lebanon War, each episode has deepened the complexity of the dispute and made resolution more difficult. U.S. involvement evolved from arms restraint to active military supply and shuttle diplomacy, reflecting the conflict's broader Cold War dimensions. The formation and persistence of the PLO, territorial changes resulting from successive wars, and the human costs borne by both sides have all ensured that the Arab-Israeli conflict remains one of the most challenging geopolitical issues of the modern era.