7 November 2018 | Author/Destination: Levant / Levante | Rubric: General , Union for the Mediterranean
Reading Time: 14 minutes
Men’s and women’s prayer area © Daniel Case/cc-by-sa-3.0
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The Western Wall, Wailing Wall, or Kotel, known in
Islam as the Buraq Wall, is an ancient limestone wall in the
Old City of
East Jerusalem . It is a relatively small segment of a far longer ancient retaining wall, known also in its entirety as the “Western Wall”. The wall was originally erected as part of the expansion of the
Second Temple begun by
Herod the Great , which resulted in the encasement of the natural, steep hill known to Jews and Christians as the
Temple Mount , with the
Dome of the Rock/Qubbat As-Sakhrah and the
Al-Aqsa Mosque , in a large rectangular structure topped by a huge flat platform, thus creating more space for the Temple itself and its auxiliary buildings. For Muslims, it is the site where the Islamic Prophet
Muhammad tied his steed,
al-Buraq , on his night journey to Jerusalem before ascending to paradise, and constitutes the Western border of
al-Haram al-Sharif .
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6 January 2018 | Author/Destination: Knut Wingsch | Rubric: General , Editorial , Union for the Mediterranean
Reading Time: 1987 minutes
© Oncenawhile
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(Latest update: 23 August 2022) The Arab–Israeli conflict is the political tension, military conflicts and disputes between a number of
Arab countries and
Israel . The roots (
European colonial period ,
Ottoman Empire , widespread
Antisemitism in Europe,
Jews in the Russian Empire ,
Baron Edmond James de Rothschild (
Jewish land purchase in Palestine ),
Theodor Herzl ,
Jewish National Fund (
Israel Bonds ),
timeline of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict ,
World War I ,
Sykes–Picot Agreement (
San Remo conference ,
Mandate for Palestine ,
UN Charter, Chapter XII – International Trusteeship System, Article 80 (commonly known as the “Palestine Article” used by both conflict parties, Israel and Palestine, to create the wildest interpretations, speculations and conspiracy theories to assert the respective alleged right to the total land area),
McMahon–Hussein Correspondence ),
Balfour Declaration ,
World War II ,
The Holocaust (
International Holocaust Remembrance Day ),
Évian Conference ,
Mandatory Palestine ,
Forced displacement , and
United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine ) of the modern Arab–Israeli conflict (or the history of collective failure) are bound in the rise of
Zionism and
Arab nationalism towards the end of the 19th century. Territory regarded by the
Jewish people as their
historical homeland is also regarded by the
Pan-Arab movement as historically and currently belonging to the
Palestinians , and in the
Pan-Islamic context , as
Muslim lands . The
sectarian conflict between Palestinian Jews and Arabs emerged in the early 20th century, peaking into a
full-scale civil war in 1947 and transforming into the
First Arab–Israeli War in May 1948 following the
Israeli Declaration of Independence (
Nakba and the
assassination of UN mediator Folke Bernadotte by the terror organization
Lehi/Stern gang . Among them, the later Israeli PM
Yitzhak Shamir ). Large-scale hostilities mostly ended with the cease-fire agreements after the 1973
Yom Kippur War, Ramadan War, or October War . Peace agreements were signed between Israel and Egypt in 1979, resulting in Israeli withdrawal from the
Sinai Peninsula and abolishment of the
military governance system in the
West Bank and
Gaza Strip , in favor of
Israeli Civil Administration and consequent unilateral, internationally not recognized, annexation of the
Syrian Golan Heights and
East Jerusalem . Even when the text is about 556 pages long, it is just a summary. The multitude of links point out that there is a lot more to learn in detail. At first, it is a timeline of the major developments in the region and it leads to today’s challenges. The starting point is the view of the
international community , especially the European Union and North America, on the conflict, enriched with excursions into the ideas, convictions, believes, and thoughts of the direct and indirect involved parties to the conflict.
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