Jerusalem: The Land of Dispute and Conflicts

Israel was established on 14th May 1948, before that the land on which Israel was established was under the control of Palestine. They administered 100% of the land, then Israel started to expand and slowly started to occupy Palestinian land. They fought eight wars and all the time victory hails to Israel, this shows the power of expansionist Jews. 

Jerusalem is the official capital of Israel but right now it is under the control of United Nations Organizations (UNO). UNO is unable to satisfy the sentiments of both the religious communities that are Jews of Israel and Muslims of Palestine. There is a land of 35 acres in the middle of Jerusalem which is under the possession of three religions which are Judaism, Islam and Christianity.

For Jews, there is Holy Wall remains of the Holiest place called 'Temple Mount' which is treated as the purest and most worshipped site for Jews. For Muslims, there is a mosque named Al-Aqsa which is the third most religious site for Muslims after Mecca and Medina. 

There is a saying about Al-Aqsa mosque that this was the place from where the last prophet of Islam named Mohammad ascends to the haven. For Christianity, this was the place where Jesus Christ spends many days and crucified.

Reason for Dispute

So according to the current situation that 35 Acre of land is in dispute. The main reason for the dispute was that Israel is an expansionist civilization that continues to expand its territorial boundaries over Palestine, so recently some weird thing happened in Sheikh-Jarrah, the eastern part of Jerusalem. 

The conflict was that the people of Sheikh-Jarrah are not ready to accept the expansionist policy of Israel. Recently the Supreme Court of Israel passed a law that the land of Sheikh-Jarrah was the owned property of Israel which they bought from Arabs and now Palestinians are staying there so it's the moral responsibility of Israel to settle Jews to their land of Sheikh-Jarrah by evacuating Palestinians homes.    

This process of replacing Palestinians with Jews initiated a feeling of revolution in the hearts of Palestinians. As the month of Ramadan was going on so, Muslims were following their rituals at Al-Aqsa mosque. Forces of Israel were aware of that and they were predicting that it may boost up the revolution so they decided to evacuate the mosque with their full force.

This aggression of Israel boosted the hormones of Hamas, the terrorist group of the Gaza Strip which is a part of Palestine. Hamas launched 200 rockets against Israel which cost them decent damage. In retaliation, Israel fortified Gaza land and started to penetrate Gaza Strip with their modern tanks against Hamas which is known to be funded by Iran.

While this process was going on, a group named Hezbollah of Lebanon launched three rockets towards Israel but they are not able to penetrate Israel Boundaries and that crashed in the Mediterranean Sea meanwhile Syria's terrorist groups also started to launched rocket on Israel but they were unable to penetrate the Iron Dome of Israel. 

Many internal disputes are also going on in Israel and Benjamin Netanyahu is also not an absolute prime minister because political disputes are also going on. This creates the possibility of a multi-front war for Israel. If this happens Israel will be in great confusion about managing all these clutters. 

International Opinions

The United States of America directly supports Israel by saying that Israel has the right to defend itself. Austria also came into direct support of Israel by hosting its flag on their national assembly. France and Germany also came into support of Israel. 

Muslim nations like Saudi Arabia, Iran, Pakistan, Turkey, Lebanon and Syria came into direct support of Palestine but India managed to work with a neutral stance at the United Nations by submitting its statement that, India condemns all acts of violence, mourns the tragic demise of Indian national in Israel, hopes to see immediate de-escalation as the need of the hour and urge both sides to refrain from changing status-quo.

When the Hamas attacked 'Gaza', there was an Indian national who died in these attacks and the Israeli Ambassador to India personally called their family and talked to them and ensured their funds for the education of their children. This act of Israel accelerated the relations with India. 
Israel is helping India in this pandemic also.

Few teams of several researchers came to India from Israel to research the Covid-19 virus. Israel is providing economical benefits to India. While Palestine is an economically backward state with cultural heritage. So, India is developing its moral duties towards Palestine.

Conclusion

Thus, the Jerusalem dispute created havoc between Jews and Muslims. India's relation with Israel is improving since 2014 and relations with Palestine are not that important for India. But culturally Palestine is really important for India. 

A few years back former President of India Dr Pranab Mukherjee visited Palestine and opened the Indo-Palestine Centre of Excellence in Abu Dis city of Palestine. India is also providing annual budgetary aid of $30 million. Palestine is an economically backward country and has really good relation with India since 1947 but its economic relations got affected because of the repeated conflicts the region has to suffer through. 

The relationship timeline of Palestine is way older than that of Israel with India. Israel started to support India in almost every field by sharing its technological resources. India managed to maintain its neutral stance which is probably shown in today's tweet of Israel Prime Minister. 

In which the national flag of all the supporters was shown but the Indian tri-colour was missing any mention. But it doesn't affect Indian foreign policy because Israel understands the reason for the Kashmir issue that is why India is restricting itself openly supporting Israel. Even in the situation of war, Israel is still supplying medical aid to India.

Written by - Aditya Pandey  
Edited by - Piyush Pandey