The Middle East has a history of conflict between nations. One of the long term conflicts is between Israel and Palestine. The conflict is driven by many factors such as ethnic, historical and even religious. Among them, the paper will focus on the historical factors.  Historical factors are the main causes of the conflict between Israeli and Palestine (Gelvin, 2014).

Israel is the Jewish state, and it is located towards the east of the Mediterranean Sea while Palestinians consist of the Arabs that were displaced from the present residence of Israel. The conflict is between who controls the land. The matters of control of land hail from the early 20^th century. Jews fled the European persecutions and wanted to settle into their homeland which by then was controlled by the Arabs and the Muslims. In 1967, Israel fought, and it took control of West Bank and the Gaza strip which are the homeland to most of the Palestinians. Currently, the West Bank is controlled by Palestinians although the occupants are the Israeli where the Israeli troops enforce restrictions on the Palestinians. Jews are ever expanding communities in the West Bank and completely deny the land to Palestinians. The conflict can be solved primarily by implementing the two-state solution. It would involve the establishment of Palestine as a state in Gaza and a large part of West and the rest of the land left to Israel (Caplan, 2014). However, theoretically, the approach is feasible although its practicability is difficult. On the other hand, a one-state solution would solve the conflict. In this case, either the entire land belongs to Israel or Palestine. This approach would cause more problems. However, it might be the only solution to end conflict.

From the research, various scholars recognize that the conflict between Israel and Palestine was pioneered by the persecution of Jews in Europe. Jews had to flee to their homeland as a means of escape from the massacre. Coming back to their land, it was already occupied by the Palestinians and other Muslim ignited war.  As a student, it is challenging to live within such conflict. The conflict has a psychological effect since the zone is ever under bombing attacks. Whenever the bombing is done in public students among other people are injured, and others die. More also, the conflict instills fear, and the learning process is ever disrupted (Smith, 2010). The occurrence of attacks also disrupts the academic calendar as the students are required to escape the war.

The conflict can have extended psychological effects to the Israeli and Palestinian students living in the diaspora. Making friends between such students would be difficult despite being in a different culture and away from the field of conflict. Unless one is directly involved in such a conflict, it is difficult to understand the extent to which it affects one’s emotions. Therefore, it is difficult for Canadian students to fully understand the emotional turmoil due to the conflict between Palestine and Israel. Canada, for instance, has no extended historical conflict with any other nation. However, the conflict between Israel and Palestine is constantly reporting the killings of young and old. Students are ever in fear of either losing their lives or even their loved ones. Therefore, since Canadian students don’t have such firsthand experience of conflict, it is tough to sympathize with the condition of Palestinian and Israeli students.

References

Gelvin, J. L. (2014). The Israel-Palestine conflict: One hundred years of war. Cambridge University Press.

Caplan, N. (2011). The Israel-Palestine conflict: contested histories (Vol. 16). John Wiley & Sons.

Smith, C. D. (2010). Palestine and the Arab-Israeli conflict: A history with documents (Vol. 464, p. 466). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.