Palestine

On January 25, President Donald Trump proposed that Egypt and Jordan aid in displacing and resettling the 1.8 million Palestinian refugees still living in Gaza. “You’re talking about probably a million and a half people, and we just clean out that whole thing,” the President said at a rally in Las Vegas. On February 4, he told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu the Arab nations would not reject his plan—Trump threatened to withhold aid from the countries should they refuse to comply. The Palestinians would be grateful, he also claimed, to live somewhere "they can be happy and not be shot, not be killed," rather than remain in Gaza.

Conflict over ancient religious grounds has seen a resurgence in recent months between conflicting nations each championing different religions and governmental systems: Israel, a Jewish nation, and various organizations with allegiance to Islam. This conflict has modern roots in the establishment of the State of Israel that was granted sovereignty by the British in May 1948, which was concurrent with the expulsion of over 750,000 Palestinians from land that would become Israel. The budding nation soon found it engulfed in a war known as the Arab-Israeli War that ended in 1949 after Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria signed an armistice agreement. Further conflict continued to marr the political and geographic history of one of the most coveted lands in the world, such as the Six-Day War, the Yom Kippur War, and the First and Second Intifadas. The newest in a long line of fighting is Israel’s current conflicts with both Hamas in the Gaza strip and Hezbollah in Lebanon.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a political minefield and the United States has placed itself right in the middle of it. U.S. diplomatic ties and historical sympathies for Israel have repeatedly antagonized Palestine, and by extension the entirety of the Arab world. The Palestinian question is one of many issues that drive a stake between the U.S. and its Arab allies, although the issue of Palestine has potent nationalistic implications for Arab countries. This in combination with other points of conflict with the Middle East threaten U.S. access to important resources like oil with larger implications for greater global security.

Hamas is an Islamist militant group in the Gaza strip, which is also known as Harakat al-Muqawama al-Islamiya (Islamic Resistance Movement). Hamas is a Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. It is recognized as a terrorist organization by the United States Government and many other countries due to its armed resistance against Israel.