The Arab-Israeli conflict was a string of hostilities between Israel and several Arab nations. Following the UN’s division of Palestine, Israel proclaimed itself an independent country, sparking the first war (1948–1949) (Britannica, n.d.). Five Arab nations – Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria – assaulted Israel in retaliation for this action. Nevertheless, as a result of this war, Israel had gained a sizable amount of land. Egypt’s nationalization of the Suez Canal marked the start of the 1956 Suez Crisis (Britannica, n.d.). In response to international criticism, a coalition made up of France, Great Britain, and Israel attacked Egypt and took control of the canal zone.
Israel launched attacks on Egypt, Jordan, and Syria during the 1967 Six-Day War. At the end of the conflict, Israel controlled a sizeable portion of Arab land. Egypt and Israel engaged in an unreported attrition battle around the Suez Canal in 1969–1970, which was finally resolved with the aid of international negotiations (Britannica, n.d.). The Yom Kippur War, which Egypt and Syria launched against Israel in 1973, resulted in no clear victory for the Arabs despite their early successes; eventually, Egypt and Israel made peace in 1979. In order to drive out Palestinian militants stationed in Lebanon, Israel invaded the country in 1982 (Britannica, n.d.). Israel left the majority of Lebanon by 1985, although they kept a small buffer zone there until the beginning of the 21st century.
At this point, the given political context should be accompanied by the cultural background of the conflict. The Israeli attempted to resist pan-Arabism and identify themselves as a separate cultural unit. They founded such an approach on religious discrepancies, as well as on personality and value differences. Extreme suspicion of both fellow Arabs and foreigners, which stems from child-raising traditions, is a fundamental characteristic of Arabs (Goodman & Boudana, 2019). The main Arab cultural principles are characterized as conservatism and fatalism, which determined their hostility towards Israel. Then, the possibility of Jewish characteristics influencing the new Israeli identification raises a fundamental query that is connected to one of the core concerns of the growing Israeli identity (Goodman & Boudana, 2019). These include restlessness, inferiority complex, skepticism, and distrust of Gentiles, which justified their struggle against the hostile culture.
References
Britannica. (n.d.). Arab-Israeli wars.
Goodman, G., & Boudana, S. (2019). The language of objectivity: Reuters’ internal editorial discussions on terminology in the Arab–Israeli conflict, 1967–1982. Journalism, 20(3), 410–426.