Primers/Backgrounders

For an introduction to the basic features of the conflict, the following resources are an excellent place to start. They briefly overview the history, explain key issues, and debunk common misunderstandings.

• Jews for Justice in the Middle East, "The Origin of the Palestine-Israel Conflict"
  "Zionism was based on a colonialist world view that the rights of the indigenous inhabitants didn't matter. The mythic 'land without people for a people without land' was already home to 700,000 Palestinians in 1919. This is the root of the problem."
• Middle East Report, "Palestine, Israel and the Arab-Israeli Conflict: A Primer"
  "The conflict between Palestinian Arabs and Jews is a modern phenomenon, which began at the turn of the 20th century. Although these groups have different religions, religious differences are not the cause of the conflict. It is essentially a struggle over land."
• Norman Finkelstein, "An Introduction to the Israel-Palestine Conflict"
  "The Zionist goal of 'disappearing' the indigenous Arab population points to a virtual truism: what spurred Palestinians' opposition to Zionism was not anti-Semitism but rather the prospect -- very real -- of their expulsion."
• Palestine Center, "Modern Palestine"
  "Palestine is a small territory, and the Palestinians a relatively small population. Yet the Palestinian problem has loomed large on the international scene for at least fifty years, with tangled roots nearly a century old."
• Ann Lesch, "Palestine Mandate (1922-1948)," in Philip Mattar, ed., Encyclopedia Of The Palestinians, New York: Facts on File, 2000
  "Palestinians were caught in an impossible situation throughout the Mandate period. While other Arab territories gained independence after World War II, the aspirations of the Zionist movement blocked self-determination for the Arabs of Palestine."
• Middle East Report, "Primer on the Uprising in Palestine"
  "From the beginning, the Palestinian uprising expressed cumulative popular anger at both the violence of the Israeli occupation and the compromises Yasser Arafat seemed willing to make on basic Palestinian national rights."