Arab–Israeli conflict

Since the declaration of Israel's establishment in 1948, conflict has existed between Israel and the surrounding Arab countries, rooted in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Zionists viewed the region of Palestine as the Jewish ancestral homeland and sought to establish a Jewish state or homeland there through colonization, while Arabs generally opposed Zionism, envisioning Palestine as Arab Palestinian land and an essential part of the Arab world.

By 1920, sectarian conflict had begun following the first, second, and third waves of Zionist migration to Palestine and the Franco-British occupation and administration (1918–1920) of the former territories of Ottoman Syria (1516–1918) and the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire after World War I. In 1920, following agreements including the 1916 Sykes–Picot treaty between Britain and France, the McMahon–Hussein correspondence, and the Balfour Declaration, which expressed British support for "the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people", the League of Nations accorded the Mandate for Palestine to the British, establishing British rule in Mandatory Palestine (1920–1948).

The intercommunal violence escalated into civil war in 1947 after the United Nations' adoption of the Partition Plan for Palestine, and then into an international war in 1948 with the May 14 declaration of the establishment of Israel, the expiration of British Mandate at midnight, and the entry of Arab regular armies the following morning. The 1948 Palestine war ended with the 1949 Armistice Agreements, which established the Green Line. More wars followed in 1956, 1967, 1973, and 1982.

Several peace treaties and other diplomatic and economic accords were signed over the subsequent half-century. In 2002, the Arab League proposed the Arab Peace Initiative, although diplomatic activity between Israel and individual Arab countries involved ceasefires and later formal relations with some. By 2020, the Abraham Accords further calmed relations. Conflicts between Israel and various Palestinian factions ebbed and flowed, including the 1987–1993 First Intifada, Israel's intervention in the 1975–1990 Lebanese Civil War to oust the Palestine Liberation Organization from Lebanon, the 2000–2005 Second Intifada, the 2011–2024 Syrian civil war, and most recently the October 7 attacks in 2023 and ensuing Gaza war.