Arab–Israeli conflict

The Arab–Israeli conflict is a geopolitical phenomenon involving military conflicts and a variety of disputes between Israel and many Arab countries. It is largely rooted in the historically supportive stance of the Arab League towards the Palestinians in the context of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, which, in turn, has been attributed to the simultaneous rise of Zionism and Arab nationalism towards the end of the 19th century, though the two movements did not directly clash until the 1920s. Since the late 20th century, however, direct hostilities of the Arab–Israeli conflict across the Middle East have mostly been attributed to a changing political atmosphere dominated primarily by the Iran–Israel proxy conflict.

Part of the struggle between Israelis and Palestinians arose from the conflicting claims by the Zionist and Arab nationalist movements to the land that constituted British-ruled Mandatory Palestine. To the Zionist movement, Palestine was seen as the ancestral homeland of the Jewish people; while to the pan-Arab movement, Palestine was seen as historically belonging to the Arab Palestinian people and thereby also constituting Muslim land in the pan-Islamic context. By 1920, the opposing national aspirations of these two movements triggered the outbreak of a Jewish–Arab sectarian conflict within the British Mandate's territory, eventually escalating into the 1947–1948 Palestinian civil war following the unveiling of the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine, which sought to divide the territory into a Jewish state and an Arab state. In May 1948, one day after the Israeli Declaration of Independence, the Arab League militarily intervened in the civil war by invading the by-then former British Mandate territory to support the Arab Palestinians, sparking the First Arab–Israeli War.

Large-scale hostilities mostly ended with ceasefire agreements after the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Peace agreements were signed between Israel and Egypt in 1979, resulting in Israeli withdrawal from the Sinai Peninsula and the abolition of the military governance system in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, in favor of Israeli Civil Administration and consequent unilateral annexation of the Golan Heights and East Jerusalem.

The nature of the conflict has shifted over the years from the large-scale, regional Arab–Israeli conflict to a more local Israeli–Palestinian conflict, which peaked during the 1982 Lebanon War when Israel intervened in the Lebanese Civil War to oust the Palestinian Liberation Organization from Lebanon. With the decline of the 1987–1993 First Intifada, the interim Oslo Accords led to the creation of the Palestinian National Authority in 1994, within the context of the Israeli–Palestinian peace process. The same year, Israel and Jordan reached a peace accord.

In 2002, the Arab League offered recognition of Israel by Arab countries as part of the resolution of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict in the Arab Peace Initiative. The initiative, which has been reconfirmed since, calls for normalizing relations between the Arab League and Israel, in exchange for a full withdrawal by Israel from the occupied territories (including East Jerusalem) and a "just settlement" of the Palestinian refugee problem based on UN Resolution 194. In the 1990s and early 2000s, a ceasefire had been largely maintained between Israel and Syria, while limited warfare continued in Lebanon against Iranian proxy militias. Despite the peace agreements with Egypt and Jordan, the interim peace accords with the Palestinian Authority and the generally existing ceasefire, until the mid-2010s the Arab League and Israel had remained at odds with each other over many issues.

The Syrian civil war reshuffled the situation near Israel's northern border, putting the ruling Syrian government, Hezbollah and the Syrian opposition at odds with each other and complicating their relations with Israel upon the emerging warfare with Iran. The conflict, since 2023 a war, between Israel and Hamas-ruled Gaza is also attributed to the Iran–Israel proxy conflict. By 2017, Israel and several Arab Sunni states led by Saudi Arabia formed a semi-official coalition to confront Iran. This move and the Israeli normalization with Gulf states was marked by some as the fading of the Arab–Israeli conflict.