INDEPTH: MIDDLE EAST
Israel and the Palestinians
CBC News Online | June 14, 2006
Since May of 1948 when the modern state of Israel was proclaimed, the land has had two parallel histories, one for the Jews who control the state and one for the Palestinians who say the nation was built on their homeland.
Statehood for Israel left more than 700,000 Palestinians as refugees. For every day of the almost six decades of its existence, Israel has been on war footing, fearing the attack from its neighbours and spending staggering amounts of its energy and economy on defense.
For every day of the same period, the displaced Palestinians and their Arab supporters have worked, often with great violence, to recover land for a Palestinian state.
There may be cause for optimism, however: for the first half of that time, the situation in Israel was bubbling hostility punctuated by Arab attempts at total annihilation. For the latter half of Israeli history, it's been bubbling hostility punctuated by attempts at a settlement.
Haltingly, steps toward resolution proceed when a generation ago such steps could barely be imagined.
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