Israel - Palestine
One land - two people
Israel is a country that was created in 1948 on Palestinian land. It is a state for Jewish people from all over the world. The idea of having a country only for Jews arose in the 1800s in Eastern Europe. It is called Zionism. At this time Jews in Eastern Europe were suffering anti-Semitism, some of them thought that the solution to this must be a state where all Jews could live together.
The first problem with this idea is that the land they settled on - Palestine - was already inhabited and Zionists didn't want to share the area. War broke out and 700,000 Palestinians ran away or were driven off their land in 1948 and became refugees in neighbouring Arab countries. Today they are 3 million of them wanting to return to their homes now in Israel.
The second problem is that Israel is set up to be an exclusive country only for Jews. To have a state that is only for one sort of people leads to all sorts of undesirable situations such as: apartheid, ethnic cleansing and oppression against those who are not Jewish.
Today the problem has become even more acute. Israel has occupied more land, there is hardly any Palestine left and Palestinians who live under Israeli occupation are suffering.
Israel has one of the most powerful armies in the world with fighter jets, tanks, bulldozers and nuclear weapons. Palestinians are not allowed to have an army.
So Palestinian through all these times have resorted to fighting back by conducting guerrilla actions from the neighbouring Arab countries, by high-jacking planes and more recently by sending suicide bombers inside Israel.
The result of all this is of course a lot of death which has included many children. In the last few years, at least 701 Palestinian and 119 Israeli under-18s have died in the violence of the conflict.
Instead of division and conflict, wouldn't it be a wondrous thing if two people could share the land?