ISRAEL / ARAB Conflict Explained - The Truth About The Holy Land - Shlomo Carlebach

#Israel / #Palestine Conflict #Explained: by Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach ztl - The Truth About The #HolyLand The fighting in Israel and the Gaza Strip entered its second week. Israeli warplanes bombarded Gaza City on Monday morning as Hamas continues lobbing rockets on southern cities in Israel. Roughly 200 Palestinians have died, and officials say nearly half of them are women and children. Israel has reported at least 10 dead. Of course, many more people have suffered in the long history of this conflict. Since Hamas took control of the Gaza Strip in 2007, Israel and Egypt have maintained a blockade on the area. Khaled Elgindy, director of Israeli-Palestinian Affairs at the Middle East Institute, answers some fundamental questions that get to the root of what’s happening in Gaza. Questions About The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Answered By Foreign Policy Expert Khaled Elgindy How did it come to be that millions of Palestinians are living in the Gaza Strip? “The Gaza Strip, of course, is an entirely artificial creation that emerged in 1948 when roughly three-fourths of Palestine's Arab population was displaced, in some cases expelled, during the course of Israel's creation. And most of the refugees, they were sort of scattered across the region in neighboring countries like Jordan, Syria and Lebanon. Some went to the West Bank, which came under Jordanian rule after 1948. And a very large number went to the Gaza Strip, which is this tiny little coastal strip between Egypt and what is now Israel. Today, the population of Gaza, about 70% of Gaza's population are refugees.” Can Palestinian refugees leave the Gaza Strip?