The Middle East: conflict, crisis and change, 1917–2012 — timeline

Key topic 1 · Build up of tension in Palestine, 1917–46

The Balfour Declaration and the overlapping promises

1915–16

The Hussein–McMahon correspondence indicates British support for Arab independence in specified areas. Why this date: Whether Palestine was inside the area promised has been disputed ever since, because the boundaries were described ambiguously.

May 1916

The Sykes–Picot agreement secretly divides the region between Britain and France. Why this date: It was negotiated while the promise to Hussein was still being acted on, which is the clearest proof that the commitments were not coordinated.

2 November 1917

The Balfour Declaration favours a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine. Why this date: Its wording — a home rather than a state, civil and religious but not political rights for others — contains both of the arguments that followed.

1922

Britain receives the League of Nations mandate for Palestine, with the Declaration written into its terms. Why this date: It converts a wartime letter into a legal obligation Britain then had to administer for twenty-six years.

Clashes, the Peel Commission and terrorism on both sides

1929

Riots across Palestine, including the killing of Jewish residents of Hebron. Why this date: It shows communal violence long before the 1930s immigration surge, so the conflict cannot be dated only from Nazi Europe.

1936–39

The Arab Revolt, suppressed with substantial British force. Why this date: It weakened Palestinian Arab political and military organisation, which affected their position when the war of 1948 came.

1937

The Peel Commission recommends partition. Why this date: It reaches the structural conclusion the United Nations would reach ten years later, and it was abandoned.

May 1939

The White Paper limits Jewish immigration to 75,000 over five years. Why this date: The timing — months before the war — is why this document is cited by both communities for opposite purposes.

July 1946

The King David Hotel bombing kills ninety-one people. Why this date: It is the point at which the British administrative position became untenable, and it precedes the referral to the United Nations.

Key topic 2 · The creation of Israel, the war of 1948–49 and the Suez Crisis of 1956

Partition, the war of 1948–49 and the refugee question

November 1947

The United Nations General Assembly recommends partition; the plan is accepted by one side and rejected by the other. Why this date: It is the international authorisation both sides argue about, and the objection to it is stated in terms of majority consent.

14 May 1948

Britain withdraws; Israel is declared; neighbouring states send forces. Why this date: Three events on one day, and separating them is how a candidate avoids a muddled account of who began what.

1949

Armistice agreements leave Israel holding more territory than partition had allotted, with Egypt in Gaza and Transjordan in the West Bank. Why this date: No Arab state was established, which is the condition every later negotiation begins from.

1950

Israel's Law of Return grants every Jew the right to immigrate. Why this date: It is the legal expression of the state's founding purpose and it is set against the refusal of return to Palestinian refugees.

Nasser, the Canal and the Suez Crisis

July 1956

The Aswan Dam financing offer is withdrawn; Nasser nationalises the Suez Canal Company. Why this date: The sequence is the causation: the withdrawal comes first and the nationalisation answers it.

October 1956

Britain, France and Israel agree a plan in secret at Sèvres. Why this date: The collusion is what makes the intervention a pretext rather than a response, and it was denied at the time.

November 1956

American financial pressure on sterling forces a British ceasefire and withdrawal. Why this date: The operation was stopped by a currency rather than by a military threat, which is the fact the whole strand turns on.

1957

A United Nations Emergency Force is deployed in Sinai. Why this date: Its withdrawal at Egypt's request in 1967 is one of the immediate steps towards the Six-Day War.

Key topic 3 · Tension and conflict, 1956–73

The Six-Day War and the occupied territories

May 1967

Egypt moves forces into Sinai, the United Nations force is withdrawn at its request, and the Straits of Tiran are closed. Why this date: Israel had stated for a decade that closure would be treated as an act of war, so the sequence supplies the causation.

5 June 1967

Israel attacks, destroying most of the Egyptian air force on the ground. Why this date: Air supremacy in the first hours decided the campaign, which is the technical reason for the speed.

10 June 1967

A ceasefire leaves Israel holding Sinai, Gaza, the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Golan. Why this date: These are the occupied territories, and every negotiation afterwards is about them.

November 1967

Security Council Resolution 242 sets out the land-for-peace formula. Why this date: Its wording about which territories is deliberately imprecise, and that imprecision is itself examinable.

Palestinian resistance, Arafat and the PLO

1964

The PLO is founded at the initiative of the Arab League. Why this date: Its origin as an instrument of Arab governments is what makes the change after 1967 a genuine transformation.

1969

Arafat becomes chairman of the PLO. Why this date: It marks the organisation passing to those who argued for independent Palestinian action.

1970–71

Black September: the PLO is expelled from Jordan to Lebanon. Why this date: It shows the difficulty of an armed movement inside a host state, and it moves the problem to Lebanon, where it produces the 1982 war.

September 1972

The attack at the Munich Olympics, broadcast live worldwide. Why this date: It is the clearest case on the specification of attention gained at a cost to the cause that sought it.

The Yom Kippur War

6 October 1973

Egypt and Syria attack simultaneously; Egyptian forces cross the Canal under a missile umbrella. Why this date: The surprise and the missile screen are the two reasons for the early Arab success.

Mid-October 1973

Israel halts the Syrian advance, crosses the Canal and encircles the Egyptian Third Army. Why this date: It establishes that the war was a military reverse for Egypt, which is what makes the political outcome so striking.

October 1973

Arab producers cut production and embargo supplies; oil prices roughly quadruple. Why this date: It shows leverage exercised without an army, and its effects reached every industrial economy.

Late October 1973

Superpower alert as the ceasefire falters, followed by an imposed halt. Why this date: It is the closest approach to superpower confrontation in the region on this specification.

Key topic 4 · Diplomacy, peace then wider war, 1973–83

Shuttle diplomacy and the Camp David Agreements

1974–75

Kissinger's shuttle diplomacy produces disengagement agreements in Sinai and on the Golan. Why this date: It establishes that lines can move by negotiation, and it makes the United States the indispensable mediator.

November 1977

Sadat addresses the Israeli parliament in Jerusalem. Why this date: It breaks a taboo held since 1948 and isolates Egypt in the Arab world from that moment.

September 1978

Thirteen days at Camp David produce two frameworks, one bilateral and one for the West Bank and Gaza. Why this date: The first became a treaty and the second produced nothing, which is the assessment in a sentence.

March 1979 and October 1981

The Egypt–Israel treaty is signed; Sadat is assassinated. Why this date: The peace held and its author did not survive it, which is the price the strand exists to weigh.

The war widens into Lebanon

1975

Civil war begins in Lebanon, with Syrian intervention the following year. Why this date: The Israeli invasion entered a war already running, which is why the situation could not be controlled by removing one party.

June 1982

Israel invades, advances beyond the stated line and besieges Beirut; the PLO leadership leaves for Tunis. Why this date: It removes the PLO from Israel's border and places its leadership a thousand miles from the territories it claimed to represent.

September 1982

The Sabra and Shatila massacres. Why this date: It produced the largest protest in Israeli history to that point and a state commission of inquiry.

1983

The Kahan Commission reports and finds indirect responsibility. Why this date: A state naming its own minister in its own inquiry is unusually strong evidence for a candidate to deploy.

Key topic 5 · The attempts to find a lasting peace, 1987–2012

The first Intifada and the Oslo Accords

December 1987

The first Intifada begins in Gaza; Hamas is founded in the same year. Why this date: The uprising that made a peace process thinkable also produced the movement most committed to preventing one.

September 1993

The Oslo Declaration of Principles is signed in Washington, with mutual recognition. Why this date: Recognition between Israel and the PLO is the achievement, and it is separable from everything that failed afterwards.

1993–99

The interim period, during which permanent-status talks were to be concluded. Why this date: The gap between signature and substance is when both sides' opponents of the agreement were able to act.

Rabin's assassination, the second Intifada and the Roadmap

November 1995

Rabin is assassinated by an Israeli opposed to the Oslo withdrawals. Why this date: It shows the process being attacked from inside the society that signed it, which is the strand's central finding.

July 2000

Permanent-status talks at Camp David fail. Why this date: The questions deferred in 1993 proved no easier seven years later, which tests the whole Oslo design.

September 2000

The second Intifada begins. Why this date: It is far more violent than the first and it destroys the political constituency for the process on both sides.

2003

The Roadmap for Peace sets out phased obligations and stalls in its first phase. Why this date: Its conditional structure meant either party's non-performance halted everything, which is a design failure rather than bad luck.

2008–09

The Gaza War follows the division of Palestinian authority after 2007. Why this date: It ends the specification period with the conflict transformed in form and unresolved in substance.