 [Times photo: Jamie Francis]To Jews, this spot in Old Jerusalem is Temple Mount, where Abraham was to have sacrificed his son. To Muslims, this is Haram al-Sharif, where Mohammed ascended to heaven. Who should govern this land that has been fought over for centuries? |
By Times staff writer
© St. Petersburg Times,
published December 9, 2001
© St. Petersburg Times,
published December 9, 2001
 [Photo: AP Nov. 29, 1947]Click for The Battle for Palestinephoto gallery |
In the beginning, geography of the Bible
According to the Bible, God told Abraham to leave his home and go to Canaan, where God promised he would make Abraham a great nation and give the land to his offspring.
Historical research suggests that sometime after 2000 B.C., a tribe called the Hebrews migrated from Mesopotamia to Canaan, an area along the southeast coast of the Mediterranean Sea that approximates modern-day Israel.
The Bible says that Abraham settled in Hebron, south of Jerusalem. Abraham's wife, Sarah, could not bear children, so she offered him her handmaiden, Hagar. With her, Abraham conceived Ishmael. Fourteen years later, Abraham and Sarah did have a child together; they named him Isaac.
God tested Abraham's faith by commanding him to sacrifice his son as a burnt offering. Abraham was about to slaughter his son when God's angel stopped him. Muslims believe this son was Ishmael; Jews believe it was Isaac.
Both religions agree that Ishmael was cast out into the wilderness of Beersheba, in the Negev Desert. The Bible says God told Abraham that Ishmael would be blessed, that he would "multiply him exceedingly; twelve princes shall he beget, and I will make him a great nation."
According to Islam, Ishmael's descendants, flourishing in Arabia, became Muslims.
The descendants of Isaac, who remained in Canaan, were known as the Israelites. (Isaac's son Jacob was known as Israel.)
 Click for interactive map |
Famine struck Canaan and the Israelites moved to Egypt where, according to the Bible, they were enslaved for 400 years. In the 1200s B.C., Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt.
According to the Bible, God gave Moses the Ten Commandments and the tenets of Judaism. During the next 40 years the Jews wandered, eventually returning to Canaan, the land they believed God had promised them.
Around the same time, according to historical scholars, the Philistines migrated from areas around the Aegean Sea and they, too, settled in Canaan.
During the 1100s and 1000s, the Philistines and the Israelites fought. Historical scholars say the Philistines had iron for their armor, the Israelites did not. In the biblical story of David and Goliath, the young Israelite David, armed with a slingshot, felled the Philistine giant Goliath, who carried a shield and sword.
It was David who created the kingdom of Israel around 1000 B.C. He captured Jerusalem and made it the capital. His son, Solomon, built the First Temple there, near the spot on Mount Moriah where Jews believe Abraham was to sacrifice his son to God. Within the temple was the Holy of Holies, which housed the ark of the covenant -- the chest containing the tablets inscribed with the Ten Commandments.
Over the centuries, Jerusalem saw a series of conquerors: the Assyrians, the Babylonians (who destroyed Solomon's temple), the Persians (who allowed the Jews to build a second temple), the Greeks and the Romans, who took Jerusalem in 63 B.C.
In 70 A.D., the Romans burned the Second Temple and sacked the city. By 135 A.D., they prohibited Jews from living in Jerusalem. Romans began calling the area Palaestina, for Philistia, the land of the Philistines.
 [Times photo: Jamie Francis]Many roads have been blockaded between Palestinian villages in the West Bank, so Palestinians often end up praying as they walk the countryside. |
Palestine also is sacred to Christians. Jesus' life, teachings, death and resurrection are built upon Jewish history, tradition and writings; sites sacred to Jews also are significant for Christians.
According to the New Testament and Roman records, Jesus was born in Bethlehem, just south of Jerusalem in what is now the West Bank. The site of his crucifixion, burial and resurrection in Jerusalem are today covered by the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, not far from the site of King Solomon's temple.
The Roman emperor Constantine converted to Christianity in 312 A.D. Palestine became a center of Christian pilgrimage; many Jews left the region.
Around 610 A.D., according to Islamic belief, an Arab merchant in Mecca, in modern-day Saudi Arabia, heard God speak to him through the angel Gabriel. He was to become known as the prophet Mohammed.
According to Islam, Mohammed was transported one night from Mecca to the site of Solomon's temple in Jerusalem on a winged, white beast, al-Buraq. Mohammed prayed and the prophets of Judaism and Christianity prayed behind him. The angel Gabriel offered Mohammed a choice of drink, wine or milk. He chose milk and was told he had chosen wisely.
 [Times photo: Jamie Francis]Jews come from around the world to pray at the Western Wall, remnants of the Second Temple complex the Romans destroyed in 70 A.D. |
Mohammed ascended to heaven, where he received the revelation of the tenets of Islam and the commandment to pray five times a day, then he returned to earth. Driven from Mecca for his preaching, he settled in Medina in 622 A.D. He died 10 years later.
In the century after, Muslim Arabs moved north from Arabia to conquer most of the Middle East -- including Palestine -- north Africa and parts of Europe and Asia, an empire larger than Rome's. The spread of Islam was even more extensive: It moved swiftly to the borders of India, and in subsequent centuries huge populations took root in India, China and southeast Asia.
Islamic civilizations developed distinctive art and architecture and enhanced mathematic systems, including algebra, Arabic numerals and the concept of zero.
Palestine is sacred to Muslims worldwide because Jerusalem is believed to be the site of Mohammed's ascent to heaven, from the same spot the Jews had built their First Temple. There Muslims built the Dome of the Rock shrine.
From 636 until 1098, various Muslim dynasties ruled Palestine. Jews and Christians were generally tolerated as "People of the Book."
Zionism, Nazism, too many British promises
After the fall of the Roman Empire, the Christian Church became the most powerful force in what is now Europe. The Crusades began in 1096, a series of military expeditions ostensibly to free the Holy Land from the Muslims. Crusaders captured Jerusalem in 1099 and held it until the great Arab sultan, Salah ad-Din, recaptured it in 1187.
The Crusades helped drive a wave of intense hatred toward Jews in Europe. They lost the right to own land and practice certain trades; they were forced to live in ghettoes, and many were massacred.
By the end of the 1800s, most Jews in western and central Europe had some legal rights restored. That was not the case in eastern Europe and Russia, where restrictions remained tight and many were killed in a series of massacres called pogroms.
 Click for larger map |
Between 1881 and 1914, more than 2-million Jews left Russia and eastern Europe for the United States. Others went to western Europe and throughout the world, including Palestine.
The pogroms and the long history of Jewish persecution also had a far-reaching effect. They spurred the modern Zionist movement.
Zionists believed non-Jewish societies would never accept Jews; the only way to escape persecution was to create their own independent state. In 1897, the First World Zionist Congress, meeting in Basel, Switzerland, proclaimed a campaign to create a Jewish homeland in Palestine.
Palestine was ruled by the Turkish Ottoman Empire, inhabited mostly by Muslim Arabs and a minority of Christians and Jews. The Zionists bought land in Palestine and established farming communities. The first all-Jewish city, Tel Aviv, was founded in 1909.
During World War I, the British and French challenged the Ottoman Turks -- allied with the Germans -- for control of the region. Looking for help from all quarters, the British made contradictory promises to Arabs in the Middle East and to Jewish Zionists in Europe.
Hoping to encourage an Arab revolt against the Turks, the British promised support for eventual Arab independence. Meantime, British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour promised the British Zionist Federation that the government would work for a Jewish homeland in Palestine.
World War I ended and the victorious Western powers divided the Ottoman Empire. The League of Nations assigned the British to administer the area to be called the Palestine Mandate, directing that it should include a homeland for the Jews. In 1918, more than 600,000 people lived in Palestine. About 80,000 were Jews; more than 500,000 were Arabs (about 10 percent Christian, the rest Muslim).
In 1921, Britain split the land. The part east of the Jordan River, which they called Transjordan, they gave to the Arabian prince, Abdullah, whose father Sharif Hussein had been a leader of the Arab revolt against the Ottomans. It would become modern-day Jordan. The land west of the river remained under British administration as Palestine.
In Europe, Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party came to power in Germany in 1933. The Nazis deprived Jews of citizenship, seized their businesses and destroyed synagogues.
Many Jews fled, some to Palestine. Most nations had adopted restrictive immigration policies; in the United States, the Depression led workers to fear that Jewish refugees would take their jobs.
In Palestine, friction grew between Arab and Jew, living side by side on what each considered their rightful homeland. Increased Jewish immigration led to Arab uprisings.
In 1939, the British published an official government report called a white paper that effectively promised Arabs a halt to Jewish immigration to Palestine after five years, to be followed by self-government with an Arab majority.
The British tried to enforce the ban on immigration. They denied entry into Palestine of the Struma, a cargo barge carrying 769 Romanian and Russian Jews. Stranded without an engine in Istanbul, the Struma was towed into the Black Sea on Feb. 23, 1942. At first light, a Russian submarine sank it with a single torpedo. Only one person survived.
Underground Jewish militias tried to force the British to allow unrestricted immigration to Palestine. In 1944, Yitzhak Shamir's group, the Stern Gang, assassinated British administrator Lord Moyne. In 1946, Menachem Begin's group, Irgun, blew up British headquarters in Jerusalem's King David Hotel; 91 people were killed.
By this time, the toll of the Holocaust had become clear. Firing squads had shot more than 1-million Jews, about 4-million more were killed in concentration camps, and others died from disease and starvation. Two of every three European Jews lost their lives, about 6-million in all.
Survivors flocked to Palestine, supported by the sympathy (and guilty feelings) of the West, which for too long had ignored the reports of genocide.
On Oct. 4, 1946, U.S. President Harry Truman called for "substantial immigration" and supported the Zionist plan for a "viable Jewish state." The British felt the statement prejudiced negotiations between the Arabs and Jews.
By 1947, despite official British policy to stem the flow, the Jewish population in Palestine had grown to about 650,000; the Arab population was about 1.6-million. The British turned the question of Palestine over to the United Nations.
On Nov. 29, 1947, the U.N. passed a resolution to partition Palestine into Jewish and Arab states and make Jerusalem an international zone within the Arab sector.
The Zionists accepted. The Arabs did not.
Arab militias blockaded Jewish Jerusalem.
On April 9, 1948, the Jewish Irgun and Stern Gang underground forces attacked the nearby Arab village of Deir Yassin, despite its peace treaty with the Jewish military. More than 100 civilians were killed. For Palestinian Arabs, Deir Yassin became a rallying point against Israel and Zionism.
On May 14, 1948, Israel proclaimed itself an independent state. Less than 24 hours later, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria attacked. The war lasted until the summer of 1949.
The Jewish state emerged with not only what the U.N. had offered, but with about half the land the U.N. had intended for the Arab state. Jordan and Egypt occupied the remaining portion of what would have been Arab Palestine, but Palestinians directed their ire toward Israel.
Some 520,000 to 1-million Palestinians left their homes between December 1947 and January 1949. Many fled. Most became refugees in Lebanon, Egypt and Jordan.
The Palestinians called it al Nakba -- the Disaster. Chaim Weizmann, Israel's first president, called it "a miraculous clearing of the land."
Nasser and Arafat, the PLO is born
In 1956, Egyptian President Gamel Abdel Nasser declared that Egypt would control the Suez Canal, which was jointly owned by the French and the British. France, Britain and Israel wanted to send in troops. The United States wanted to negotiate a settlement.
On Oct. 29, 1956, Israeli troops crossed the Sinai, apparently on the way to the Suez Canal. That gave Britain and France the pretext to send in troops. The U.N. -- especially the United States -- pressured all three nations to withdraw, and they did.
In the mid 1960s, Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement announced itself by dynamiting Israeli water pipelines, wells and pumps. Arafat believed Palestinians had to develop politically, distinct from Arab states.
Since the 1948 war, Arab leaders had demanded that Israel heed a U.N. resolution calling on it to accept changes to its borders and allow Palestinian refugees to return. In January 1964, a new dimension was added.
At a summit convened by Nasser, Arab leaders established the Palestine Liberation Organization as a formal entity within the Arab League; they called for "the liberation of Palestine."
 [Photo by www.panoramas.com]Jerusalem has seen Assyrians, Babylonians, Greeks, Romans, Crusaders. It is home to sites sacred to Muslims, who believe the Dome of the Rock covers the spot where Mohammed made his journey to heaven; to Jews, who believe the same spot is the tip of Mount Moriah, from which Abraham was to sacrifice his son; to Christians, who believe the Church of the Holy Sepulcher covers the spot where Jesus rose from the dead. Click for larger photo |
The 1967 war and U.N. 242
By the mid 1960s, Arafat's Fatah group was conducting raids into Israel and the Israelis were counter-striking. Arab states banded together, with Egypt and Syria signing a mutual defense pact. The next year, Jordan joined the pact.
On May 22, 1967, Nasser announced that he intended to blockade the Strait of Tiran, which Egypt controlled but which was a prime shipping lane for Israel. Israel considered it an act of war.
In a surprise attack beginning at 8:45 a.m. June 5, Israel destroyed 300 of Egypt's 431 aircraft on the ground. It took just three hours.
In six days, Israel captured the Gaza Strip and the Sinai Peninsula from Egypt, the Golan Heights from Syria, and the West Bank and East Jerusalem from Jordan. Some 300,000 Palestinians fled.
The Israeli government began building paramilitary settlements in the captured territories that would eventually be converted to civilian use.
To Palestinians, the expansion of territories controlled by Israel amounted to colonization, taking land that had been in their families across more than 1,000 years.
To Jews, it was reclaiming land that Arab invaders had taken. This feeling of reclamation was most visceral in East Jerusalem, home to the remnants of the Second Temple complex the Romans had destroyed. Its Western Wall is the most sacred spot in Judaism.
After the 1948 war, Jordan had denied Jews access to the Western Wall and Temple Mount, where Abraham was to have sacrificed his son; now Jews had East Jerusalem back.
After the 1967 war, Israel allowed Muslims to administer their holy places, including the al-Aqsa complex, the third-most sacred spot in Islam, which contains the Dome of the Rock -- from which Mohammed made his journey to heaven. (The Dome of the Rock sits on what the Muslims call Haram al-Sharif and the Jews call the Temple Mount.)
Arab leaders called on Israel to withdraw, unconditionally, from the occupied territories. But Israel said it would withdraw only if its Arab neighbors signed peace agreements. The United States, which had called for Israel's unconditional withdrawal from the Sinai in 1956, now sided with Israel.
Arabs expected worldwide support, because the U.N. charter enshrined the principle of "the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war."
In Resolution 242, issued Nov. 22, 1967, the U.N. did call on Israeli forces to withdraw from territories occupied in the war.
But the resolution also protected Israel's right to exist. It called for recognition of the independence of states in the region and "their right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries free from threats."
Munich to the White House: short-lived peace
A year later, the PLO amended its charter and essentially called for the destruction of Israel:
"Armed struggle is the only way to liberate Palestine. The Partition of Palestine in 1947 and the establishment of the state of Israel are entirely illegal. ...
"The Palestinian people possess the fundamental and genuine legal right to liberate and retrieve their homeland."
Arafat became chairman of the PLO in 1969. Under his leadership, the PLO carried out attacks it called part of its "armed struggle" to end Israeli occupation. Some attacks Arafat denied knowing about, some he said he had no control over.
Israel believed Arafat knew the PLO group Black September planned to attack Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympics in Munich. Black September killed an Israeli wrestling coach and weight lifter and took nine Israelis hostage to bargain for the release of 200 Arab prisoners. In a shootout with German sharpshooters, all nine Israelis, five Arab terrorists and a policeman were killed.
In October 1973, on Yom Kippur, the most sacred day of the Jewish year, Egypt and Syria overran Israeli positions in the Sinai and Golan Heights. Resupplied with U.S. material, Israel won back the land. Arab countries struck back at the United States via OPEC, which cut oil sales. Between the resulting "energy crisis" (with long lines at U.S. gas stations) and the terror at the Munich Olympics, the battle for Palestine had spread globally.
On March 11, 1978, 11 guerrillas of Arafat's Fatah wing of the PLO came ashore on the Israeli coast. Their goal was to take over a hotel in Tel Aviv and hold tourists hostage in return for the release of imprisoned Palestinians.
On the Haifa-Tel Aviv coastal road, they killed passengers in a taxi and commandeered a tourist bus. At a roadblock outside Tel Aviv, a gun battle between the guerrillas and Israeli forces ended when the bus blew up and caught fire. The toll from the Coastal Road massacre: 37 dead, 76 wounded.
In the 1970s, new leaders emerged. In Egypt, Anwar Sadat replaced President Nasser, who suffered a fatal heart attack. Israelis elected hard-liner Menachem Begin, who declared that Israel would not "under any circumstances" relinquish the West Bank or allow a Palestinian state west of the Jordan River.
Begin's government embarked on an ambitious settlement drive. The settlers became "facts on the ground" -- flesh and blood that would keep the land from returning to a purely Arab state.
By the late 1970s, the United States had become the most influential outsider in the Middle East conflict.
In 1978, President Jimmy Carter held a summit with Begin and Sadat at Camp David in Maryland. The Camp David accord called for Israeli withdrawal from occupied territory but without specifying the extent of the withdrawal. It left options for a final settlement: autonomy for the Palestinians under Jordanian or Israeli sovereignty. It did not mention Palestinian statehood, the PLO, Syria or the Golan Heights.
On March 26, 1979, Sadat, Begin and Carter embraced on the White House lawn. Israel would withdraw from the Sinai in exchange for peace with Egypt and the establishment of diplomatic relations.
To offset an Arab boycott of Egypt and to reward Sadat for making peace with Israel, the United States dramatically increased aid to Egypt. Today it receives some $2-billion a year, second only to Israel.
Iran and Afghanistan: a new nationalism
The year 1979 proved to be a watershed in the rise of Islamic fundamentalism, a political movement favoring a return to a purer Islam, uncorrupted by Western social and political influence.
The Iranian revolution and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan provided opportunities for what would become modern Islamic theocracies -- governments that claim to rule with divine authority.
Most Iranians had come to despise the shah, who tortured his opponents, Westernized the country, reduced the central role of Islamic clerics and institutions and brought in Americans for technical support. He had stayed in power 37 years -- with considerable help from the CIA.
The opposition found its leader in the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who declared that "there is not a single topic of human life for which Islam has not provided instruction and provided norms." In February 1979, a broad-based revolution ended the shah's reign and led to a backlash against the United States.
On Nov. 4, 1979, Iranian students occupied the U.S. Embassy and held 53 hostages for 444 days.
In Afghanistan, a Soviet-backed coup put a pro-Moscow communist regime in power in December 1979. Soviet troops crossed the border to support it. Muslim resistance fighters, a loose alliance of seven factions, were organized in Pakistan and supported by the United States.
The Soviets withdrew in 1989 but for 10 years, the CIA and Saudi intelligence pumped billions of dollars of arms and ammunition via Pakistan to the militias, including one supported by Osama bin Laden. Afghanistan was left awash in weapons, warlords and religious zealotry.
The battle for Palestine: Israel opens a new front
Egypt had long been a cradle for Islamic militants, who considered Anwar Sadat's signing of a peace treaty with Israel as the ultimate betrayal.
The treaty earned Egypt a cold shoulder in the Arab world, and on Oct. 6, 1981, it helped earn death for Sadat in a hail of bullets from members of al-Jihad, a militant Islamic group.
Three former U.S. presidents attended Sadat's funeral, but not one Arab head of state.
Meanwhile, the PLO had moved its base of operations to Lebanon, where there was a long-running conflict between Christian and Muslim groups. The Muslims supported the PLO, the Christians did not.
Trying to control the PLO, the Israelis began supporting the Christians. On March 14, 1978, 20,000 Israeli soldiers invaded Lebanon, clearing a security zone along the border. The United Nations sent in peacekeepers, but they were largely ignored.
Hostilities among the Muslims, Christians, PLO, Syrians and Israelis flared in the spring and summer of 1981. Negotiators from the United States, the U.N., the PLO and Saudi Arabia arranged a cease-fire on July 24, 1981.
This, however, left the PLO in place, which was anathema to Israel.
On June 6, 1982, Israeli tanks and troops invaded Lebanon and within eight days, surrounded Beirut. Under the protection of international peacekeepers, the PLO evacuated West Beirut and southern Lebanon. The peacekeepers left.
President-elect Bashir Gemayel, the leader of the Lebanese Christian militias, was assassinated in mid September. Two days later, Christian militiamen killed hundreds and probably more than 1,000 unarmed Palestinian and Lebanese civilians in the Sabra and Shatilla refugee camps in Israeli-occupied western Beirut.
Israeli commanders had allowed the militia in, ostensibly to weed out Muslim terrorists. Outsiders thought Israeli forces knew what was going on but chose not to intervene.
An Israeli commission of inquiry recommended the dismissal of several officers for neglect of duty, including Defense Minister Ariel Sharon. (Now, almost 20 years on, Palestinians in Belgium have filed a complaint asking to prosecute Sharon for war crimes over his role in the massacre.)
Terrorists felt the United States was a co-conspirator with Israel in its occupation of Lebanon. On April 18, 1983, a car bomb at the U.S. Embassy in West Beirut killed 63 people. President Ronald Reagan ordered the shelling of targets in Lebanon.
On Oct. 23, 1983, suicide bombings of the U.S. Marine and French barracks in Beirut killed 241 American and 58 French peacekeepers. In November, suicide bombers destroyed Israeli headquarters in Tyre, killing 60 Israeli soldiers and Arab prisoners.
The conflict in Lebanon marked an important turning point: Israel had opened another front in the Arab-Israeli conflict -- taking the fight to Shiite Muslim militia groups in southern Lebanon.
Shiite Muslims did not initially oppose Israel for the cause of Palestine; they wanted the Israeli security zone off their land. Islamist organizations, including Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad, were founded after the Israeli military seizure of Lebanon -- but resulted in the formation of units for the liberation of the occupied territories in Israel.
Hezbollah ambushed Israeli soldiers in Lebanon, laid land mines and lobbed shells. Israel arrested suspects. Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad kidnapped Westerners to bargain for their release.
From 1984 to 1991, almost 100 foreigners, including 17 Americans, were kidnapped in Lebanon. William Buckley, the CIA station chief in Beirut, was tortured and killed. U.S. Marine Lt. Col. William R. Higgins was kidnapped, his body shown years later on videotape hanged from a gallows.
On Oct. 7, 1985, a PLO faction hijacked the Italian passenger liner Achille Lauro, with more than 400 people on board, and demanded the release of 50 Palestinian prisoners. The hijackers shot Leon Klinghoffer, who used a wheelchair, and dumped him into the sea. They did not get their prisoners out.
By the late 1980s, old-line Palestinian groups like the PLO lost influence -- viewed by young Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip as ineffectual and removed from day-to-day life. Radicalism, with religious overtones, was on the rise.
Hamas, an outgrowth of the Muslim Brotherhood in Palestine, was founded in 1987. The Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which had originated among militants in the Gaza Strip around 1979, became more active. Both oppose Western influence in the Middle East and are committed to an Islamic state in Palestine and the destruction of Israel.
In December 1987, after two decades of Israeli control over life in the occupied territories, Palestinians began an intifada, a sustained general uprising.
The intifada transformed the Arab-Israeli conflict: It shifted focus away from Israel's relations with neighboring countries and onto its relations with the people in the occupied territories. Palestinian children with rocks faced armed Israeli soldiers.
Though not inspired or run by the PLO, the intifada focused attention on the Palestinian cause, and on Yasser Arafat as the most likely negotiator.
On Dec. 13, 1988, Arafat told U.N. delegates meeting in Geneva that the PLO accepted U.N. Resolution 242 and recognized Israel's right to exist. The next day, he renounced terrorism. Within hours, the United States officially opened a dialogue with the PLO.
More seeds of hate, another try for peace
On Aug. 2, 1990, Iraq invaded Kuwait, posing a threat to the oil-producing Persian Gulf region. Osama bin Laden offered to reinforce the Saudi government's National Guard with his Afghan veterans.
Above all, bin Laden warned against inviting "infidel" American troops onto Muslim holy soil. Devout Muslims believe the land where the prophet Mohammed lived is sacred, off-limits for nonbelievers. Only Muslims are permitted in the cities of Mecca and Medina.
But the Saudi royal family was in no position to risk a face-off with Saddam Hussein's more powerful army. Within months, U.S. and other allied troops -- 500,000 in all -- swarmed across the Saudi desert. Bin Laden equated the U.S. presence in Saudi Arabia with the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.
By the end of February 1991, the U.S.-led coalition of Arab states had pushed Iraq out of Kuwait.
Current U.S. allies in the Middle East include the monarchies in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain and Jordan, and the governments of Algeria, Egypt, Turkey and Tunisia. All have suppressed militant Palestinian or Islamic movements, and in some cases, nonviolent ones as well. Many Arabs see U.S. support of authoritarian regimes as evidence that stability and oil are more important than justice and right.
An example is Algeria, an important source of petroleum and natural gas. In 1991 elections, the unexpected success of a fundamentalist Islamic party prompted the military to stage a coup and postpone elections. The United States did not condemn the coup. It seemed the United States preferred a military dictatorship to a democratically elected government that included fundamentalist Muslims.
On June 23, 1992, the Israeli leadership changed, ending 15 years of the hard-line policies of Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir. Israelis elected Yitzhak Rabin, who expressed his willingness to freeze construction of new Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza and to trade some captured territory for peace.
In August 1993, Arab and Israeli delegates met in Washington for the 11th round of stalemated peace talks. From Oslo, Norway, came the startling announcement: Israeli and PLO representatives had met secretly; they had an agreement.
Rabin, Arafat and President Bill Clinton signed a peace plan. With his hand on Rabin's back, Clinton propelled the prime minister to shake hands with Arafat. Israel would withdraw in phases from parts of the West Bank and Gaza; there would be Palestinian self-rule in most of Gaza and much of the West Bank.
The harder questions were left for later. Would there be an autonomous Palestinian state? Who would control eastern Jerusalem, site of religious and emotional touchstones for both sides? What would become of Jewish settlements? What would become of the almost 4-million Palestinian refugees?
On Oct. 26, 1994, Jordan and Israel signed a peace treaty calling for economic and political cooperation.
Terrorists from all quarters worked to disrupt the peace process.
On Nov. 4, 1995, Rabin told a crowd of about 100,000 gathered in Tel Aviv's Kings of Israel Square that the time for Israeli-Arab peace had come at last. The crowd roared when Rabin joined in singing The Peace Song. Leaving the rally, Rabin was shot and killed by a 25-year-old Orthodox Jewish law student opposed to trading land for peace.
Hamas and Islamic Jihad suicide bombings coupled with the assassinations of suspected Palestinian terrorists, presumably by Israeli intelligence, derailed the peace process.
On May 29, 1996, conservative Benjamin Netanyahu ousted Shimon Peres in Israeli elections. Netanyahu infuriated Palestinians by subsidizing West Bank settlements.
On May 18, 1999, the Labor Party's Ehud Barak was elected Israel's prime minister. He campaigned on the promise to rejuvenate the peace process.
On July 11, 2000, President Clinton hosted Barak and Arafat at Camp David, a two-week summit that went nowhere. Barak's offer to the Palestinians is said to have included a state in 91 to 95 percent of the West Bank and Gaza, a share of East Jerusalem and the dismantling of dozens of Jewish settlements.
The Palestinians rejected the offer and say it was not nearly as generous as it has been portrayed. They say they would have been unable to make a viable state out of the patchwork of territories offered, interspersed with hundreds of autonomous Jewish settlements. They insisted that some Palestinian refugees be allowed to return to Israel and that they be given sovereignty over East Jerusalem.
On Sept. 28, 2000, Ariel Sharon led a delegation to the Haram al-Sharif/Temple Mount complex, igniting long-simmering resentment among Palestinians into full-scale rioting in a new intifada.
The Palestinians targeted Israeli settlements in the disputed territories; they organized armed opposition to the Israeli military; suicide bombers went into the heart of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, exploding bombs in nightclubs, on buses, in shopping bazaars.
Israel raided areas from which it had withdrawn; it rocketed Palestinian police and military offices it blamed for allowing attacks; it assassinated people it said organized the violence.
On Feb. 6, 2001, Israel overwhelmingly elected Ariel Sharon prime minister, reflecting Israeli dissatisfaction with continuing violence and stalled peace talks. Sharon suggested he would seek something far more modest than the comprehensive agreement Barak had been negotiating.
New U.S. President George W. Bush backed off from Clinton's hands-on approach. The administration believed the combatants should solve their own problems. But the Sept. 11 attacks changed everything.
The administration became desperate for the Palestinian-Israeli conflict to cool, to make it easier for Arab and Muslim governments to support the United States in its new war on global terrorism.
When the emir of Qatar addressed the United Nations General Assembly Nov. 10, his comments reflected the conflicted feelings in many Arab countries. Sheik Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani called the Sept. 11 attacks "unprecedented and almost beyond our imagining," but in an obvious reference to Palestinians, he added:
"We need to have a clear definition of terrorism and distinguish between this phenomenon, which is based on criminal practices and attacks against civilian and innocent people, and legitimate struggles to get rid of the yoke of illegitimate occupation and subjugation."
When President Bush addressed the General Assembly earlier that morning, he used the term Palestine for the first time to refer to a future homeland of the Palestinians.
"We are working toward a day when two states, Israel and Palestine, live peacefully together within secure and recognized borders," Bush said. "But peace will only come when all have sworn off, forever, incitement, violence and terror."
Sharon's current position is that he will accept creation of a Palestinian state, with strict limitations -- a less generous offer than the Palestinians turned down at Camp David. He says Israel would control all the borders around the new state, retain security zones in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and keep control over all of Jerusalem, including Arab neighborhoods and the disputed sacred sites.
Arafat counters that he is being offered none of his long-standing demands, including an end to Israel's 34-year-old occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, a sovereign Palestinian state with control of its borders and East Jerusalem as its capital.
In the 14 months since the second intifada began, about 800 Palestinians and 230 Israelis have lost their lives.
Pretenders to the cause? Or, coming full circle?
Three years ago, when Osama bin Laden called on Muslims to kill Americans, he compared the continued U.S. presence in Saudi Arabia to "crusader armies spreading in it like locusts, eating its riches and wiping out its plantations.
"The United States has been occupying the lands of Islam in the holiest of places, the Arabian Peninsula, plundering its riches, dictating to its rulers, humiliating its people, terrorizing its neighbors and turning its bases in the Peninsula into a spearhead through which to fight the neighboring Muslim peoples."
The day the United States began bombing Afghanistan, bin Laden invoked the Palestinian cause, which is emblematic of all the perceived injustices and humiliations Arabs believe they have suffered:
"In these days, Israeli tanks infest Palestine -- in Jenin, Ramallah, Rafah, Beit Jalla and other places in the land of Islam. . . .
"I swear by God, who has elevated the skies without pillars, neither America nor the people who live in it will dream of security before we live it in Palestine."
Some say bin Laden and Saddam Hussein, who said one of the reasons he invaded Kuwait was to help the Palestinians, are pretenders to the cause, invoking Palestine to gain legitimacy. Even Arafat questioned bin Laden's motives.
But whether or not bin Laden and others have hijacked the Palestinian cause may be beside the point. Ultimately, the question of peace is about a homeland for Palestinians and a secure state for Israel.
About this report
Today the Times presents a narrative timeline of some key events that shaped the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It is more history than newspapers usually devote to a story, yet it only scratches the surface.
Few topics are as polarizing, and some people undoubtedly will take issue with accounts or omissions. The Times sent drafts of this story to experts on the Middle East, who offered important suggestions that helped in the editing and fact-checking. They, too, often differed in their interpretations of historical events.
The lead researcher on this story was Natalie Watson, with assistance from Caryn Baird, Kitty Bennett, Mary Mellstrom, Barbara Oliver and Cathy Wos. It was written and compiled by Richard Bockman, edited by Tom Drury and Neil Brown, and designed by Amy Hollyfield.
Sources: The Middle East, 9th Edition, by Congressional Quarterly; the New York Times; BBC News Online; The Arab-Israeli Dilemma, by Fred J. Khouri; The World's Religions by Huston Smith; The Oxford Companion to Politics of the World, 2nd Edition; The World Book; Encyclopedia Britannica; Encyclopedia Americana; The Holy Bible (King James Version), 1979: the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints; Hating America, CQ Researcher, Nov. 23, 2001; the Economist; The Avalon Project at Yale Law School; Discover Islam, by the American Islamic Information Center; Times wires; Times files.
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